


No Wonder, No Wonder (Other Half)

by luninosity



Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Autumn, Bartender!Michael, Books, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Sex, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Happy Ending, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Quite A Fairy Tale, Past Relationship(s), Recovery, Revelations, Secrets, True Love, Writer!James, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2017-12-30 21:29:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 54,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Michael gets a job in a pub, James has a past he doesn't talk about and is <i>probably</i> not magical, and every good fairy tale earns its happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [significantowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/gifts).



> For [significantowl](tumblr.com/significantowl)'s prompt of, _the steps on the hillside lead to a cabin covered in moss and ivy, and James is the man who lives inside - that is, if man is entirely the right word. Some say fairies live in these woods, some whisper of other things... not that it particularly matters one way or another, but Michael can't keep himself from wondering…_
> 
> Title, opening, and eventual closing lines from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' song "Hysteric."
> 
> The rating is because there will be, in later chapters, first kisses, first times--that is, sexual content; some revelations--not very specific--about past trauma, and James having a panic attack. Also, of course, much comfort and cuddles and fluff. And coconut coffee.

_no longer, no longer_  
 _what you ask_  
 _strange steps_  
 _heels turn black_  
 _the cinders, the cinders_  
 _they light the path_  
 _of these strange steps_  
 _take us back, take us back_  
 _flow sweetly, hang heavy_  
 _you suddenly complete me_  
 _you suddenly complete me…_

  
  
The cottage was enchanted. That was practically the first bit of information Michael heard upon arrival, and, as he’d walked by it earlier that afternoon and seen the silent ivy-shrouded sides, the fairy-ring of trees encircling soft white walls like a fortress, he could just about believe it.  
  
“It’s haunted,” said one of the older men cheerfully, in the pub. “Ghosts and all. Tragic love story, et cetera.”  
  
“Loon,” said his companion, affectionately. “You just say that to scare the tourists.”  
  
“Ah, we barely even _get_ tourists…”  
  
This was true; their particular English-idyll village sat tucked away from major roadways and historic attractions. They had sheep and cheese and an ancient pub and an old Iron Age hill-fort up the road, so overgrown with grass that historically-minded visitors got lost looking for it. Michael smiled to himself, and drew another pint, and slid it over.  
  
“It’s fairies, isn’t it,” Hugh said in passing, which prompted everyone in the sleepy low-roofed place to stop and look at him. Hugh rolled his eyes. “The story. About that place. Conan Doyle went out there once in the eighteen-nineties. Thought he’d find winged people in the garden.”  
  
Michael raised an eyebrow at him.  
  
“It’s true,” Hugh said, perfectly deadpan, “the man was mad for fairies, you should’ve talked to him,” and headed back into the kitchen to produce extra sausage rolls.  
  
“You weren’t there!” Michael shouted at his back, and Hugh announced, “Maybe I was!” before vanishing. Michael laughed; so did Ian and Patrick, from the other end of the bar.  
  
“He might’ve been,” Ian observed, “one never knows. Our Hugh could be a fairy.”  
  
There was a moment’s pause, while they all considered this.  
  
“…no.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Probably not. Michael, were you really curious about the place? It’s not available.”  
  
“I was just wondering.” He flicked the shaker into the air, caught it on the back of his hand, poured. Ian applauded the bright pink concoction and the skill. “Dear boy, you are a marvel. How did you end up here?”  
  
“I was trying to be an actor,” Michael said, which was more or less true, if not the whole of the truth. The rest of the story belonged to one other person, along with the unhealed pieces of his heart; nobody else needed to know.  
  
The bit he’d offered, though, was more than sufficient for the two retired Shakespeareans currently settled in at the King’s Bacon. The pub in fact belonged to a person named Kevin Bacon, though the name was a coincidence; the place’d been standing since before Cromwell, and was currently snug and safe against the autumn howl.  
  
Kevin had hired him on the spot, no questions asked, the previous week. Michael’d found out later that the previous bartender’d quit that morning, off to London and the world of excitement; his timing had been perfect. If one could call it that, given the circumstances.  
  
Both Patrick and Ian glanced at each other; Patrick leaned over to pat him on the arm. “We do know that story. It’s all right, though; sigh no more, and all that. Blithe and bonny.”  
  
“Converting all your sounds of woe,” Ian jumped in, apparently just to top the line, because they’d previously established that everyone in the current conversation knew _Much Ado_ backwards and forwards and inside out.  
  
“Yes,” Michael retorted, “thank you, Beatrice and Benedick,” which earned two delighted smiles and a brief squabble about who was whom in the relationship. Michael, who was of the opinion that it depended on the day and anyway he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, displayed entertained teeth at them and went back to drying glassware.  
  
Hands occupied, he ventured, “I was only curious,” which was true. He’d been out walking, when he’d seen it nestled away among the trees. Gold-leaf light splashed over the windows, and tangled on the path before the door. He’d nearly followed that path, entranced.  
  
He’d thought better of it—no one in any sort of right mind would take kindly to a stranger appearing out of nowhere in the isolated middle of the woods, and anyway he was going to be late getting back—but, glancing over his shoulder, he’d felt the strangest impression that someone was watching him, had seen him too and was equally intrigued.  
  
He’d always been an out-of-doors sort of person, even in the city. Liked the rain on his face, the wind in his hair. Brought back memories of Ireland and an emerald childhood and lilting voices in his father’s restaurant.  
  
“There is some sort of legend about it,” Patrick mused, “but I can’t recall what, at present. Another drink might help.”  
  
“Oh, all right, then…” His hands knew the drill; they’d been tending bar in London for years. This was quieter. Drowsier. Kinder.  
  
The wind rattled the door, companionably.  
  
“Rain tomorrow,” Hugh said, wandering out again. “Anyone want overcooked chips? On the house.”  
  
“How did you ever get a job in a pub,” Michael said, and ate five.  
  
Hugh shrugged, suggested, “Kevin likes me,” and left the basket on the bar, next to the ketchup.  
  
“If Hugh were a fairy,” Ian said, “he’d be a better cook,” and adventured a chip, shuddered, and chased it with a drink.  
  
“It’s a love story,” Patrick said.  
  
 _“Hugh?”_  
  
“No! Though there must be one; he is married. I meant your cottage. I can’t think of the details. A fairy in love with a human, or maybe the other way around.”  
  
“In any case,” Ian said, “it’s occupied, you can’t move in. Sorry.”  
  
“I like my place.” He did. It was temporary—rented rooms in a Georgian brick building a few block down—but it had parking for the motorbike and a lovely little old landlady who didn’t care that he kept nocturnal hours and had turned up with no references. She occasionally brought him tea. He suspected she felt sorry for him. “Occupied, though? Someone lives there?”  
  
Ian and Patrick exchanged glances.  
  
“What,” Michael said, amused, “is it a national secret, that place,” and drowned one of Hugh’s chip disasters in ketchup and consumed it. Pondered whether he could do something with liquid smoke, behind the bar.  
  
“It’s simply not our secret to tell,” Patrick decided, with finality. “Sorry.”  
  
“Hmm. Will this person mind if I go out running, around there?”  
  
Another traded glance, back and forth; Ian conceded, “Not necessarily. You’ll never see him.”  
  
“But he won’t mind?”  
  
“He…won’t talk to you. It’s not personal. Just don’t knock, or try to speak to him.”  
  
Michael instantly felt the desire to knock, to see who hid on the other side of the ivy-twined door. His imagination pulled up all sorts of fanciful ideas: brownies, pixies, a great beast, as in Beauty and the, lurking in loneliness…  
  
More likely it was just a weary hermit, a person who appreciated solitude and the stillness of the woods. Michael could sympathize. He appreciated that peacefulness as well.  
  
“I won’t,” he said, “but if I meet him by accident, I can’t promise I won’t say hello.”  
  
“You won’t,” Ian said, “but that’s all right, now tell us about yourself, we can’t stand not knowing everything, and you’ve been here a week, it’s about time.”  
  
“And one man in his time plays many parts,” Michael said back, Shakespeare for Shakespeare and nondisclosure, and the wind purred like a kitten around the sturdy building. He wondered whether it was also purring around the enchanted cottage, swirling the leaves. He wondered about that mysterious _he_ , and he hoped that the person, whoever or whatever he was, felt warm and safe. Even fairies needed to be cozy, after all.  
  
He wondered, too, whether he would accidentally meet that _he_. On a walk, perhaps, leaves crunching red-gold underfoot, following a trail around a tree, face to face in surprise…  
  
He’d always been curious. Like a cheetah, his mother’d said once, exasperated: fast and long-legged and easily intrigued. And he’d grown up loving science-fiction, the supernatural, and superheroes; he’d once tied a cape round his neck and pretended to be Superman. Superman would probably be fascinated by fairies.  
  
And then he shook his head, and laughed at himself and his fantasies, and got out another bottle of whiskey for the back table.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Michael meets James, rather dramatically, in the rain.

Michael was late, and the world was raining.  
  
He’d slept poorly, dreams of cameras and a laugh and a hand on his shoulder, a smile he’d given up; waking, he’d barely had time to grab a shirt and sprint for the door. He’d heard the rain as if from a distance, percussion to his headache; he’d bolted down the steps and into a puddle and only then registered the downpour.  
  
No help for it now, and no point in going back for his bike; he was only three blocks from the pub. He attempted, fruitlessly, to run between raindrops. Cursed his life in colorful metaphors.  
  
Kevin wouldn’t fire him—at least he thought not—but wouldn’t be happy, either. Second week on the job, and he’d managed to be late. Pitiful.   
  
Long legs made up some of the time, and the street was deserted, which helped. Most people had more sense than to be out in the apocalyptic flood. At least the run was getting him warm.  
  
He darted past the door to the village bookshop just as it opened, and squarely in time to collide with the person leaving.  
  
They both went sprawling. Michael landed on top, and found his elbow dangerously close to a wide blue eye, and his knee crushing a broken paperback that’d slid out of its plastic bag.  
  
“Oh, god—I’m so sorry, are you all right, here—” He attempted to roll to the side, managed to dig his knee into the person’s hip and then into a puddle, and finally was able to scramble upright. The rain plopped onto his hair.  
  
He tried holding out a hand. “I’m so fucking sorry. I swear. I’m late for work and I—never mind, you don’t care, I—oh, no, your book—” He lunged for that too. It’d landed squarely in the miniature lake between cobblestones.  
  
When he turned back around, damp pages clutched between too-late fingers, the bluest eyes in the universe met his gaze, brilliant against the grey of the rain and the cobblestones.  
  
Michael forgot how to breathe.  
  
The eyes blinked, once, and then said, “Ow?” as if they weren’t quite sure about beginning a conversation in the wake of the trampling.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Michael repeated, and then ran out of air all over again, because _freckles_ , acres of freckles, on that nose and at the base of a throat where a woolly scarf’d slipped and on skin just visible beneath dark blue fingerless gloves.   
  
He remembered suddenly that the gorgeous man in front of him had just hit the extremely wet ground extremely hard, mainly because the man had lifted a hand to rub the back of his skull, blinking again, and was saying, in a rich tartan accent that would forever invade Michael’s dreams,  “Very much ow, I think…are you all right?”  
  
“What—me? I’m—yes, are you? Here, don’t move for a minute, let me see—” He did have some basic first-aid training. He could put it to good use. He could offer to help.  
  
As he leaned forward, though, the blue eyes went wider—more so than Michael expected even given the circumstances—and flinched away. It was a tiny movement, but spoke volumes. Encyclopedias.  
  
He wondered how he could read so much into a single motion when they’d only just met. He also wondered whether he’d be justified in asking who’d left such scars behind those eyes.   
  
They were extraordinary eyes. They shouldn’t have to fear the touch of a person offering to help.  
  
Of course, he _had_ just practically run the gorgeous man over. A little caution was possibly justified, on the other side.  
  
They sat in the rain for a few seconds and looked at each other. The gorgeous person rubbed his head again, winced, glanced at his hand, which was very wet, but only from rainwater, not blood. Michael winced too, due to guilt and a few emerging bruises.  
  
He was still holding the soggy book. “Is this—was it important? I mean, of course it was important, you bought it, I can buy you another one. Please.”  
  
“It’s fine.” That voice glowed, despite the soggy autumn afternoon. Whiskey and hearthfires. Worn Scottish leather and exotic spice. “It isn’t…it’s not rare, or anything, I only had them order it for me, it’ll dry out. I’m sorry, you said you were late for work? You don’t need to stay, or—don’t let me make you more late, if you need to go.”  
  
“No, it’s all right, I’m already—I mean, Kevin probably won’t kill me more than once. Here?” He tried to make it a question, getting to his feet, holding out a hand. The blue eyes gazed up at him, and hesitated—Michael thought for a second they’d refuse—and then took it.  
  
And then immediately gasped in pain. “Oh, fuck—”  
  
“What—”  
  
“Ankle, sorry—”  
  
“Stop apologizing to me!” He tugged them both into the shelter of the bookshop doorway. “Can I look at it for you? _Please_.”  
  
“I…all right.” The gorgeous person let himself be eased onto the step, permitted Michael’s hand on his leg. Glancing up, Michael noticed that his face was white, fingers clinging to the returned paperback like driftwood in a tempest.  
  
“Is it that bad?”  
  
“What? No…it’s better now. Honestly. I think I just landed wrong. Thank you.”  
  
“For knocking you over? No.” He set his hand just above the line of that ankle, denim damp beneath his touch. “Can I make sure? I won’t, if you don’t want me to, but someone should.”  
  
Still pale; but he got the nod, so he peeled wet fabric out of the way, revealing fair skin and confirmation that, yes, the freckles extended everywhere. They pinwheeled over his calf, unexpectedly playful starbursts of color across equally inviting solid muscle.  
  
Not the time for aesthetic appreciation. Not even _remotely_ appropriate. Michael wrestled his sudden and hideously out-of-place interest back down where it belonged. He was lonely. That was all.  
  
And the gorgeous person was, well, gorgeous. Had eyes like the ocean. Had dark hair that stood up in loops and stuck to his face, teased by rain.  
  
Was looking at him with those endless eyes and trusting him to touch. And Michael had the sense that that trust wasn’t given very easily.  
  
“Does this hurt?” He pressed lightly, lifted, tested the bend and flex of the joint. “It’s not broken, but it might be a bad sprain. How _much_ does it hurt, if I do this?”  
  
“Not… _oh_ …okay, some. Not too much. I’ll be all right. I’ll wrap it, when I get home. And stay off it.” The twin sapphires of those eyes had regained some equilibrium; they were almost smiling. “I’ve been…I’ve gotten hurt before. I can handle this.”  
  
“Put ice on it,” Michael told him. “And—”  
  
“—elevate it?” That _was_ smiling, now; but etched around the edges with a kind of wry appreciation, as if rather enjoying Michael’s determination to care for him. “Thank you.”  
  
“How far—”  
  
“Actually, that’s my car.” Right there, parked neatly in front of them on the street. Neither old nor new, tidy, practical; Michael felt a tiny tinge of regret. He liked his own motorbike. He liked _fast_.  
  
And then he wanted to kick himself, because he’d now managed to maul the man, injure him, lust over him, and debate his romantic potential, all in the span of five minutes. Good god. He was a horrible person.  
  
“Let me help,” he said, and provided a supportive shoulder as they lurched through the rain. At least the injury wasn’t that bad; he was already walking on it, if painfully. “Are you _sure_ —”  
  
“Yes, I’m fine. Oh—hold on, wait!”  
  
Michael, who’d only managed one step back, dove forward.  
  
“Here—you’re walking, aren’t you?—you should take this.”   
  
“You…had an umbrella?”  
  
“In my defense, my car was literally steps away. I was thinking I’d just run.”  
  
“I’m sorry. Again. Your book, and—I can’t take your umbrella.”  
  
“Yes, you can.” Those ocean-jewel eyes danced up at him, the only color in the world, and Michael automatically took the object pressed into his hands. Their fingers touched.   
  
The sun didn’t come out; instead, thunder rumbled, deep and sonorous as an orchestral fanfare. He wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean.  
  
“Well,” said that Scottish-amber voice, very quietly, as if one word might be able to fill up all the empty spaces in the universe; and then Michael’s mobile phone shrieked the James Bond theme at him, and they both jumped.  
  
“Oh, no, not now, sorry, sorry—”  
  
“No, I’m sorry, you were late for work, go on—”  
  
“I have to go, I—”  
  
“I know, it’s fine!” One hand waved at him, and the car door finally shut, and Michael shouted “Stay off your ankle!” at the last possible second and imagined he could hear that voice laughing, even though he knew he couldn’t, through the closed door and the driving away and the rain.  
  
And then he realized he was standing in the downpour with a borrowed umbrella, and very late for work; he realized he’d just met quite possibly the person of his dreams, and he’d never asked the person’s name, or given his own.  
  
“Oh,” he said, with complete and heartfelt emotion, “ _fuck_ ,” and then he ran for the pub, as the thunder snickered.  
  
In the end he was only about ten minutes past four; despite Hugh’s text-poking, it didn’t matter much, as the only occupants were a few of the old-time regulars and Patrick and Ian, who despite being near-permanent fixtures on Michael’s bar stools were decidedly not regular in any other sense.  
  
He said “Sorry,” anyway, to the world at large, and shook water out of his eyes. The umbrella’d helped, but he’d been soaked before that. The pub was toasty, though. He’d dry.  
  
He should’ve told those blue eyes where he worked. Should’ve invited him into the toastiness and out of the rain.  
  
“You,” Ian observed, “resemble a half-drowned hedgehog, dear boy. Did you run all the way here in this storm?”  
  
“Only half,” Michael said, and ducked behind the bar, “and I do not—a hedgehog? Seriously?”  
  
“Your hair is rather spiky. Half?”  
  
He put a hand on his head reflexively, and glared. Neither action did any good at all. The umbrella caught his eye, mute and waterlogged, where he’d tossed it onto the bar. “Half because a very generous person lent me his umbrella. I should return that, and…I…didn’t get his name. But you’ll know him. You know everyone.”  
  
“True.”  
  
“We really do.”  
  
“Tell us, then.”  
  
“He’s…” For some reason words didn’t come to the surface easily, even though that face lingered, sketched in permanent ink on his memory. Some quality about it that wasn’t easily defined, he thought: a sense of wistful compassion, of banked embers under snow, waiting without expectation for a thaw.  
  
“He’s short. Dark hair. Scottish accent.” He barely managed to avoid embarrassing himself by throwing the word _beautiful_ in there. “Freckles on his nose, and eyes like…” Midnight at sea. Clear moon-light over tropical waters. “…sapphires, sort of. Um. I mean they were…blue. Very…blue.”  
  
Ian and Patrick looked at each other. Then back at him.  
  
Ian said, “No.”  
  
Patrick said, “Yes.”  
  
Ian asked, “You met James?”  
  
“He didn’t meet James,” Patrick retorted, “because no one meets James. Michael, you didn’t meet James, did you?”  
  
“I didn’t get a name!” Though he very, very much wished he had.   
  
“James doesn’t _talk_ to people,” Ian said.  “James barely talks to us, darling, and we were there when—”  
  
“Darling,” Patrick said right back, “shut up. Michael, are you sure?”  
  
“I’m fairly sure that I’ve met James—” He noted, with some satisfaction, that they both jumped slightly at that name on his tongue. “—and I think I’ve got his umbrella. You seemed to know who he was from my description. Who is he?”  
  
Patrick and Ian looked at each other again.  
  
“He was coming out of a bookshop,” Michael added, in case that might provoke another reaction.   
  
“Well,” Patrick mused, “that does sound like James…but…Michael…he doesn’t talk to people. Especially not strangers.”  
  
“I’ve been here two weeks! I work here now!”  
  
“Yes, and you’ve never met him. You see the problem.”  
  
“You said he doesn’t talk to people,” Michael said. “But that can’t be right. I mean, he was in a bookshop. And he gave me his umbrella.”  
  
“He comes into town once a week or so,” Patrick said, slowly, “because he has errands to run, I think. And he likes books. But…the umbrella…”  
  
“It’s a real umbrella!” They all stared at it. It lay there and dripped and provided no answers.  
  
Hugh stuck his head out of the kitchen. “What are we yelling about?”  
  
“James,” Ian said.  
  
Patrick clarified, “That’s his umbrella.”  
  
Hugh looked around the pub interior: off-white walls, thick wooden furnishings, array of taps behind the bar. “Either he’s invisible, or you’re hiding him under a bar stool. Does he want food?”  
  
“Not here,” Patrick said, “Michael met him.”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“That’s what we said.”  
  
“Michael,” Hugh rumbled, “I’ve lived here for years and I’ve never met James. Not that he’s been here for years. Months, though.”  
  
“I’m not making this up!”  
  
“Of course you’re not.” Ian patted his hand. Michael yanked it away. “Oh, sorry, was that patronizing? I never can tell.”  
  
“I despise you all,” Michael said. “Hugh, how can you not have met him? You talk in the general direction of every person who’ll listen. And he seemed perfectly nice.” And attractive. And kind. And wet all over, from Michael’s collision with him.  
  
He opted not to mention that part, in case the village inhabitants decided to lynch him for trampling their secret mystery person.  
  
James had given him the umbrella even after that. How many people would’ve done the same?  
  
“He _is_ perfectly nice,” Patrick said. “We believe you. We’re only rather amazed.”  
  
“Oh, come on, next you’re going to tell me he’s a ghost or something, and to return the umbrella I’ve got to go and put it on his grave.”   
  
There was a short but meaningful silence.  
  
“I wasn’t serious!”  
  
“No, no, he’s definitely alive!” Patrick glanced at his other half, who helpfully added, “Er…as far as we know.”  
  
“So you two know him,” Hugh said, abandoning the kitchen in favor of joining in, because apparently this was a topic of great local interest.  
  
“Know him…well, we’ve met him. More than anyone else has. But I wouldn’t say we know him.”  
  
“And he’s most certainly alive,” Patrick said, with a scolding look at Ian. “Honestly. The poor boy doesn’t need us telling people he’s deceased. He’s not a ghost, or a fairy, or an elf, or any of that.”  
  
“I’m not sure he’s entirely human,” Ian said. “He looks half his age. Without any assistance. That can’t be natural. Possibly supernatural.”  
  
“He was driving a _car_ ,” Michael said.  
  
“That’s not necessarily proof. Anyway, it’s mine.”  
  
“…yours?”  
  
“It’s not as if Patrick and I really need more than one. We told him to consider it a long-term loan. I assume he’s taking excellent care of her.”  
  
“I…think so.” The car’d looked fine, if wet and a bit muddy. “Why…”  
  
“He didn’t have anything,” Patrick said, in a tone of voice that suggested the discussion ought to be closed, “and we help each other. Like you, Michael, when you turned up. Can you make us something purple and very bad for our livers, please.”  
  
Michael looked at the umbrella, then at Patrick’s steel-calm eyes, then gave in and went to do his job, now that he’d finally arrived.   
  
The pub filled up, as it always did, over the course of the afternoon, into the evening, men and women off work, trivia nights and chatter and Ian’s impromptu King Claudius impersonations. Laughter and the tang of beer and cider. Hugh’s attempts at shepherd’s pie and sandwiches. Home.  
  
None of the men who filed in, shrugging off coats and scarves and the storm, was his person. Several of them were short, and one or two had blue eyes. But none of them was right. None of them was James.  
  
He kept the umbrella tucked under the bar. In the rare moments without demands, the lulls between orders, the minutes when he might’ve let himself think about London and the dull ache in his chest and the physicality of loss, he caught sight of the navy-blue folds waiting there. Inexplicably, in those moments, he felt his face tugging itself into a smile.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which James and Michael meet for the second time. Motorbikes, pub adventures, hurt/comfort, curry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [euphorbic](http://euphorbic.tumblr.com/) for some motorcycle assistance!

Time went forward, as time often did.  
  
Michael spent nights in the pub, mornings napping on his narrow rented bed, afternoons exploring his adopted countryside. He’d always liked running; he pushed himself, chest heaving, legs burning, through medieval streets and forested paths. He got to be very adept at jumping over logs, avoiding rocks, spotting landmarks in tree-bark and moss; entertained, he pictured how friends in London might’ve reacted to this undiscovered woodscraft talent. It was more like remembering, he thought, than relearning. He’d passed quite a lot of his boyhood up in trees.  
  
On a brittle late-October day, he went for a long walk, wandering out through the woods. His boots crunched over fallen leaves; the breeze, frisky as a puppy, pulled at his scarf. He stuck both hands in his pockets and let his feet go where they would, while the antique-gold light splashed down around him and flirted with the pale outlines of the trees.  
  
Despite the sun, the air was icy. There’d been rain the night before; that was one reason he wasn’t running, all the treacherously slippery leaves and shining ground. The other reason was just that, on this particular afternoon, he’d felt like slowing down. Gazing around.  
  
The ice glittered serenely in the woods. Hung crystals from the branches. He kicked a fallen leaf idly with one boot-toe. It stuck to him; well, then, it could stay there. He didn’t mind the company.  
  
He’d become more of a city person, or so he’d thought, as he’d grown older. Motion, action, engines and late nights and glittering lights. But this moment, himself and the old forest and the infinite world, the knowledge of the wood-paneled place in the pub waiting for him when he chose to turn for home…  
  
Amused, he noticed where his feet’d taken him. Perhaps there was something to the enchantment after all. To lure weary travelers in, and to tempt them to stay. The cottage appeared out of the dwindling mist and considered him without judgment.  
  
He meandered a few steps closer, telling himself that he wasn’t intruding, he wasn’t going to knock, he was going to respect its privacy, he was only interested. The stocky walls approved of this respect, he guessed; at least, the atmosphere didn’t become at all unfriendly.  
  
He explored the clearing, giving the walls their space, courtesy for courtesy. Found an abandoned bird’s-nest, a log-pile, a spiderweb hung with thawing ice-crystals like tears. An old well, neatly covered and marked off; someone plainly cared whether any wanderers might be in danger.  
  
There was a small shed off to one side, with an unpaved road and tire tracks; a car, then, evidence of twenty-first-century existence. Michael found himself obscurely disappointed by this.  
  
He paused to glance at the house. No signs of life. Not even the windows stirred.  
  
He nodded to it, one survivor to another, and went back to exploring. On the north side, a window must’ve been open; tiny scraps of paper had fluttered out and blown into a bush. He picked one up. It said, in messy but legible handwriting on expensive and thoroughly modern paper, _stars like diamonds? Why diamonds?_  
  
Why diamonds, he thought, and picked up another. This one inquired _why did you come back?_ He jumped, and set it down, and resisted the impulse to back away.  
  
The next one said, more prosaically, _brownies_ _are_ —and then stopped. Michael blinked at it. Noticed that he’d been following the little scraps like bread-crumbs, almost to the window.  
  
One more. He ought to go back—he’d just have time to change and shower all the forest-damp out of his hair if he left now—and he was going to. But. One more.  
  
He picked a curl of autumn-leaf paper out of the tendrils of the bush. _—can have anything you want_ , whispered this one. _Just ask me for it_. And then, on a different line, _And what happens if I ask for you?_  
  
He stared at it.  
  
The breeze blew through his hair, sweet and cold. The leaves rustled.  
  
“Okay,” Michael said, out loud, even though he felt ridiculous talking to a house, “okay, I…have to go now. I’m—I’ll come back. But I have to—go. Now.” And he backed up a few steps, and then he did _not_ run out of the clearing and down the path. Decidedly not.  
  
He still had the bit of paper in his hand, when he reached the main path and stopped. It coiled itself up like parchment around his fingers. When he poked it, experimentally, it just felt like paper. Good quality. Contemporary ink. Hurried modern-day prose.  
  
Anything you want, he thought. Just ask. And why would you ask for me?  
  
For no reason beyond the impulse, he put it in his coat pocket. It fit easily there. Like it wanted to be kept.  
  
He went home and showered and got dressed again, and was vaguely proud of himself for being early. He might even have time to buy lunch, instead of consuming Hugh’s efforts of the day.  
  
He wrapped himself up in his coat and emerged from his building—his landlady beamed at him and tried to hand him a piece of prehistoric fruitcake—and detoured over to give his motorcycle a reassuring pat. It’d been too long; he’d have to find a decent place to take it out. Soon.  
  
When he looked up, he saw sea-sapphire eyes and dark hair and shortness, as if his eyes’d just naturally found their true north upon lifting.  
  
James was on the opposite side of the street, leaving another building; he turned, though, possibly drawn by Michael’s astounded happy ogling. Those eyes went even wider, noticeable even across the distance; Michael gave a little wave, inviting, or so he hoped.  
  
James glanced around, took a breath, then ran across the street. Technically this involved ignoring the nearby crosswalk, but no one cared, and Michael felt an absurd need to grin, heart bouncing in his chest: James had run over to see him.  
  
“Hi,” he said, breathless.  
  
“Hi, yourself.” James was a bit taller than he’d remembered, though this time not limping or in pain, which might account for that discrepancy. Still shorter than Michael or the average British-Isles male, and all gingerbread freckles and exuberant hair, which, no longer wet, was standing up in improbable waves. And the eyes. Endless and blue as the horizon.  
  
Those endless-horizon eyes seemed currently intrigued by his bike. “Is that yours? BMW? Lovely.”  
  
“You…ride?”  
  
“I did.” James was giving his bike a proper once-over, gaze sparkling. “Triumph Bonneville. Classic, though; belonged to my grandfather. I gave it back, when I—well, anyway, yours looks like fun. Nice balance of power and responsiveness, with those, I’ve heard.”  
  
Michael unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth, did _not_ tell James that he was a perfect person, and said, “Yes? Um. Triumph, that’s pretty easy to spend a day on, but not the most sort of flexible, I know, I had one once, not a Bonneville though…I mean, sorry, not criticizing. Classic, you said. Um. If you want…we could…I could find an extra helmet…sometime.” Marvelous. A whole sentence that’d simultaneously insulted James’s grandfather’s bike and not actually contained the offer he’d been trying to make. He wanted to bang his head against the closest brick wall.  
  
James bit his lip, looked up at Michael as if attempting to judge the sincerity of the statement or possibly simply navigate through it, and then nibbled on the lip some more, exuberance shrinking. “I…”  
  
“You don’t have to,” Michael said, panicking, “of course not, I just thought, if you were interested, no one else here even has a motorcycle, and you—I’m sorry again, you don’t even know me, my name’s Michael, Michael Fassbender, I work for Kevin? At the pub? I mean I’m his bartender. Sort of. As of two weeks ago. I mean it’s, you know, nice to meet you.”  
  
James now looked like he wanted to laugh, which was an improvement. “James. McAvoy. You’re exactly right about the Bonnie. But it was what we had. And…yes, maybe. Not now. Sometime.”  
  
The name sounded oddly familiar. Not as if they’d met, but as if he’d heard it before, mentioned or spoken, in the news or in print. And not only because of the pub conversation; no one’d ever said a last name. But Michael was certain he knew it.  
  
He was distracted by the subsequent words, though. “Yes?”  
  
“I think so, yes.” James brushed hair out of his face; the breeze nibbled at his scarf. Michael wanted to put an arm around him, all bundled up and windblown and tentatively excited. Wanted to learn how that shorter well-muscled frame would fit against his.  
  
That thought reminded him of something. “ _Are_ you all right? Your ankle—should I be asking you to sit down? Should you be walking?”  
  
“It’s been three weeks,” James observed wryly, “I’d be in more serious trouble if it hadn’t healed by now. No, I’m fine. Walking, standing, everything. I’m saving the marathons for next month. But thank you.” The gratitude, Michael understood surprisedly, was sincere.  
  
“Wait here,” he said, “I have something for you,” and waved toward his front steps. “I can go get it.”  
  
“You…what?”  
  
“You’re not in a hurry, are you?” He fervently hoped not. “One second. Stay right there. I’ll be right back. I promise.”  
  
James lifted eyebrows at him, but propped a shoulder against the wall, arms crossed, leaning there as if planning to, yes, stay. Undeniably splendid, Michael thought, jewel-blue eyes and dark hair and bright lips, vivid artwork against the shell-hued backdrop of the afternoon; and because he was staring he forgot to turn around and nearly fell over the first step when he backed into it.  
  
Those lips twitched. “Everything all right?”  
  
“Fine, sorry, I just—I’ll be right back.” He ran. He thought James would stay, hoped James would stay, but there was that niggling sense of doubt. Patrick and Ian had seemed so incredulous. Couldn’t believe they’d even _met_.  
  
He found what he was looking for—no time for wrapping, but he did have a small packing box, and that’d do—and flung both items into the box and hurtled back down. James was, mercifully, wonderfully, still there, leaning against the faded brick, half-smiling. “That was fast.”  
  
“I didn’t want you to leave,” Michael said, honest and trying not to pant. He shouldn’t be _that_ out of breath. Maybe it was just from standing beside those remarkable eyes. “Here.”  
  
James took the box, one corner of his mouth tipping up into even more of a smile. “Oh, that umbrella…you could’ve kept it. With these clouds, you might need it today. They’ve decided to loom.”  
  
“There’s something else, too.”  
  
James looked, laughed, quick and startled into merriment. Michael fell in love with that laugh on the spot. It was unforced and a little rusty and beautifully rich and genuine, and he wanted to hear it forever.  
  
“You…” James plucked the book out of the box, turned it over, shook his head, grinning. “I didn’t think you even saw the title, how…and why would you…”  
  
“I saw the cover. I have a pretty fair memory. And, um. I know you still have your copy and you said it would dry but that was my fault and I found this one on the internet and I thought you should have, you know, one that wasn’t sort of all wet? I’m sorry.”  
  
“For what?” James was still grinning. “You don’t need to apologize. And you didn’t need to do this, but I’m not selfless enough to turn down books when they’re being handed to me. Did you read it?”  
  
“I did.” He had. Couldn’t resist. James had bought it. He’d quite enjoyed the story, in fact.  
  
He’d also paid extra for expedited shipping, just to have it on hand, just in case of another million-to-one happenstance choosing to smile upon him. “I’m more of a Star Wars person…but it’s not like I can’t keep up with your Star Trek…this is an older one, though? One of the very first tie-in novels?”  
  
“Hence the little number two, there.” The eyes danced at him. “I didn’t have this one, and I like Vonda McIntyre as a writer in general—have you read her _Moon and the Sun_? no?—anyway, I had the shop order it because the Royal Mail doesn’t enjoy finding my place, so this was just easier…Star Wars, hmm? Ending of _Empire_ : brilliant or cruel?”  
  
“Good,” Michael said promptly, “but painful. Imagine if they’d never made the last one. Tragedy for everyone.”  
  
“Narrative amputation,” James concurred, and the wind yelped in glee. In fact, it yelped powerfully enough to make him take a step sideways, and Michael put a hand out automatically and caught his arm, steadying.  
  
James looked at the hand. Then at Michael’s face. Then looked rather surprised, in a way that didn’t seem to be directed outward, but inward, at himself.  
  
“Are you busy,” Michael said, because he couldn’t not, “you could come to the pub with me, if you’re not, I could make you a drink, I’m very good at that, Ian tells me so.”  
  
“The…pub.” James caught his lower lip between teeth, thinking. Michael’s thumb tingled, wanting to lift and smooth the pink indentation away. “I’m not busy…I was only headed home…but I don’t know…”  
  
He still had his hand resting loosely around James’s upper arm. Neither of them moved. “It won’t be full. Not this early. Probably just me, Patrick, and Ian. And Hugh failing to make what anyone would consider edible food.” He met beautiful eyes with his. Tilted his head, lifted eyebrows: please?  
  
“You bought me a book.” James looked at the not-soggy pages, the clean-if-technically-used cover. “I…yes. For a few minutes. Not—not if it gets crowded. All right?”  
  
“Perfect,” Michael agreed, and walked with him down the street, taking the outside half-unconsciously, protective. He’d made the request; he would make sure James felt safe.  
  
Their steps fell into time, despite the height difference, along the way.  
  
He held the door, when they arrived. “Being a gentleman?” James said, all Scottish-velvet amusement with a hint of exasperated fondness.  
  
“Trying to be,” Michael said back, “for you,” and caught the quicksilver edge of smile as it swung into view.  
  
“All right, then. If you’re trying on my behalf.” A deep breath, shoulders back; James took a step through the low door and into the warmth, and Michael followed.  
  
As he’d predicted, there was no one in the pub this early except Nicholas, finishing up the morning shift, and Patrick and Ian. All three of them looked up at the creak of wood.  
  
Patrick set down his drink, very slowly. Ian blinked.  
  
Nicholas, oblivious, said, “About time, seriously, okay, I’ve got a date, I’m off,” and ducked out from behind the bar.  
  
He had to squeeze past them to get out, and narrowly avoided stepping on James. James scooted closer to Michael; Patrick’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged.  
  
“Right,” Michael filled in, waving a hand at the room, the aged wood, the daily specials chalkboard, the sleepy line of taps, the colorful bottles arranged for maximum visual impact on the back shelf, “so, this is where I work. Patrick and Ian live here, I think. Come on, I’ll make you something, anything you want, I like a challenge.” And then he held his breath, and hoped James wouldn’t turn and run, or go even more pale and collapse into his arms. He wouldn’t mind having James in his arms, but he would prefer it to be because those blue eyes also wanted to be there, not because they were about to faint.  
  
“James,” he said, and put his hand back on that shoulder, inches below his. “No Klingons. I promise.”  
  
And James laughed, a single weak breath of normality, and some color came back to support the freckles. “Klingons aren’t so bad…okay, yes, I’m all right. Thank you.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“James,” Ian said, and then very obviously made an effort to bury the disbelief. “You…you’re looking…better…”  
  
One corner of James’s mouth tipped up. “You mean, you’re seeing me in public? In, in fact, a public house? A pub?”  
  
“Yes…exactly that. You…” Ian’s eyes softened. “You do look good. We’ve been worried.”  
  
“Sorry,” Patrick said, “but, James, we have to ask. Do you _know_ Michael? Have you two met?”  
  
This question got a genuine smile; Michael, gazing down at him, felt it all through his bones. “We’ve shared an umbrella,” James said, somehow managing to turn the whole misadventure into a romantic-comedy interlude in one sentence, adorable first meetings and falling in love, “and he bought me a book.”  
  
Both Ian and Patrick practically melted on the spot. Michael looked at James, and thought: I’ve just thought the word love.  
  
He ought to be more alarmed by that. Certainly his last experience with that word hadn’t gone well.  
  
He looked at James again. How _did_ one know for sure if it might be actual love? Could it take as little as a shared interest in motorcycles and a used-but-good-condition paperback and the scent of rain?  
  
“He bought you a book,” Patrick said. “Come sit with us and tell us about it. Tell us _all_ about it.”  
  
“Michael,” Ian said, “go make us drinks. Something full of fruit and alcohol.”  
  
“James,” Michael said, and James looked up at him and smiled, not the same smile he’d bestowed on Ian and Patrick, but smaller, more private, just for two. “I can sit with them. Stay with us, though, and talk to me? If you’re not busy.”  
  
The pub remained all but empty; Michael raised eyebrows at him. James let out an amused huff, half at the response, half, Michael thought, at himself. “Yes, I know. Still.”  
  
“Of course,” Michael said, and hovered at his side until he was settled on a bar stool, and then ran around the counter and parked himself across from blue eyes. Support, if necessary. But also simply because that was precisely where he wanted to be.  
  
“We _were_ worried.” Ian, interestingly, didn’t try to pat James on the hand or the shoulder or any less appropriate body part. Michael, observing, made a mental note of this. “Young Charles at the bookshop said it’d been almost a month. And you hadn’t been in for groceries.”  
  
Young Charles at the bookshop was likely twenty years older than Michael, and could wither a customer’s self-esteem with one lifted eyebrow. Michael mentally shook his head.  
  
“You don’t actually have to check up on me.” James ran a finger over the counter, the time-polished knots and lines of wood. “I’m…I was fine. I just couldn’t go out very easily; I’d managed to twist my ankle. It worked out, though. I got some writing done.”  
  
“You didn’t tell us you’d been hurt!”  
  
“We’d’ve come over if—”  
  
“I didn’t tell anyone,” James said, “but I had someone look at it, it’s fine, I just stayed off it for a few days,” and his eyes found Michael’s, sharing the joke.  
  
“Sorry,” Michael said one more time, because he was; and Ian and Patrick leveled identical glares at him. “Was there something you forgot to mention to us, the other day?”  
  
“Ah…no?” Technically it hadn’t been forgetting. James clearly appreciated this hair-splitting; at least, his eyes were laughing.  
  
“I’m all right,” James said, “I promise. I spent all day running around on it, today. It’s fine.”  
  
All three of them, including Michael, transferred the stares to him. “I had to go to the post office,” James defended himself, “I had very overdue signed copies to send out. And a check to deposit. You know. Money.”  
  
“Hmm,” Ian said.  
  
“I could’ve helped,” Michael told him, “if you had errands. Signed copies of what? Also, here, try this.” He’d not been able to refrain from experimenting. The drink was nearly as blue as those eyes.  
  
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t be interested—”  
  
“James is a writer,” Patrick informed him.  
  
“You are? What sort of things do you write?”  
  
“You won’t’ve heard of—”  
  
“Try me.”  
  
“Come on, you probably read something else, like…” James paused. And a smile played around the corners of those lips, not exactly present but implied. “The most dreadful paperback romances in existence. The kind you buy off the corner rack in the supermarket, with a half-naked man and a woman having sartorial difficulties on the cover…”  
  
Michael had to laugh. “In my case, the woman would be less relevant than the man. Though now I’m afraid you’re going to tell me you write those, at which point I’ll try not to picture my mother reading them.”  
  
“Oh,” James said, and then flushed. “I. Ah. No. That’s not—no.”  
  
Michael reviewed his sentence while the pub began to fill, patrons drifting in from work and waving in his direction. Ian and Patrick, with unusual tact, started talking to each other, and left them alone.  
  
“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you with that. Does it bother you?” And then he held his breath and hoped not, because he liked James, and not only in the _I’d take you to bed in a heartbeat_ way. That was definitely present too, but James was a likeable sort of person: intelligent, quick-witted, kind. And Michael couldn’t imagine why more people weren’t allowed to see that.  
  
“Oh,” James said again, the tips of his ears still faintly pink. “No, it doesn’t bother me—the opposite, if you really want to know. Ah, this is very much delicious, what did you put in it?”  
  
And Michael wondered just what he’d done to make God smile down on him, a piece of divine invocation that would’ve earned him a lecture from his childhood priest and also his mother, but as he’d shed the altar-boy background about the time he’d first kissed another man, he gave up worrying about that and just grinned.  
  
James liked men. James might even like _him_. James talked to him, and according to Ian and Patrick that was about as common as a glacier in July, so that had to be a good sign, right?  
  
He reined in the grin a bit, because he did know he had a lot of teeth and he probably shouldn’t frighten James with them. Leaned closer, measured distance, not enough to make those blue eyes retreat. “Raspberry liqueur, blue curacão, fireball whiskey…I might be very happy if you were inclined to let me bother you.”  
  
James blinked, stared at him, let out a laugh, startled and instantly pulled in, as if the sound itself were surprised by its existence. “You ridiculous man. Is that honestly how you flirt with people? Does it _work_?”  
  
“Well,” Michael said, picking up a glass, feeling the cool clearness against his skin, “I’m asking you that, I think.”  
  
“Me…” James shook his head, but in amusement, not denial. “I would say yes, but I know you don’t mean it, so—”  
  
 _“What?”_ Loud enough that several of the new arrivals glanced up; Michael waved away the concern, filled three pints, slid them down the bar as a distraction. For the other ears and eyes, and for his own hands, which needed to be in motion. “James, why would you—of course I mean it, why would you think I wouldn’t?”  
  
“Because I…” That bruised-sapphire gaze was looking everywhere but at him. “I’m not—come on, I’m short and I have freckles and I can barely walk into a room with other people in it and I’m not the sort of person the marvelously attractive new-to-town bartender falls head over heels in love with, all right? I know how stories work. This isn’t mine.”  
  
It was one of those moments, Michael thought. The moments that could shatter a future like a dropped pint glass or spin it out into sweetly flowing eternity. He still had one hand resting on the tap, and the other on the solid old wood of the bar; the bottles of liquor gazed down from the shelf behind him, all amber and green and fuchsia curiosity.  
  
He moved his hand over and set it next to James’s on the bar; not quite touching, or maybe touching just a little, the faintest whisper of skin against skin. The air quivered.  
  
“James,” he said, “I think you might be reading the wrong sort of stories.”  
  
And James did look at him, then, eyes astonished but, meeting his, beginning to smile.  
  
“Also,” he added, because he couldn’t let it pass, “attractive? _Marvelously_ attractive?”  
  
“Oh, you know you are, that voice, those eyes…” James had gone delightfully pink under the freckles. “I’d’ve kicked myself for not asking your name, if I’d thought I could.”  
  
“I’m sorry you were hurt, but not sorry I ran into you?”  
  
“No, I meant—never mind. I’m not sorry, either.” They looked at each other in silence. The moment stretched out, and trembled with elation.  
  
Abruptly there was a clatter of feet, a mob of bodies, shoving and jostling. One of them flopped down and took up all the space next to James’s bar stool, and others crowded around, chanting, “shots! Shots! Birthday shots!” The body next to James flung an expansive arm out, nudged him with an elbow. “You want to do a shot too? Hey, I know you, I’ve read your books! Shit, man, what’re you doing here?”  
  
James went completely white. Michael lunged across the bar without thinking.  
  
“Ow, hey, man, we were just being friendly!”  
  
“Be friendly over there!”  
  
“Okay, okay, whatever…” They moved. Michael couldn’t, because he had his other hand supporting James. Ian and Patrick materialized from nowhere on either side to help. “James? What happened? Michael, talk to us!”  
  
“Fans,” James said, shaking from head to toe, “I’m all right, I—Michael, I’m so sorry, I think I should leave, I can’t—”  
  
“You can’t go anywhere looking like that!” Between the three of them, they got James into the kitchen and pushed onto the closest available surface, which turned out to be a small stepstool. Hugh stared. “What—”  
  
“Go out there and keep an eye on the place!” Michael hissed, and Hugh went. “James, look at me, come on, you’re safe, we’ve got you. What was—”  
  
Patrick looked up, caught his eye, shook his head. Michael stopped, bit his lip, started over. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me. We’re here, though, okay? I’m here. Can you talk to me?”  
  
“I…yes.” James shut his eyes, breathed, let Ian rub warmth back into his hands. Michael knelt down beside him, said, “It’s only me, I just want to look at you, can you open your eyes, is it all right if I touch you,” and, at the nod, lifted that chin, coaxed too-faraway eyes to focus on his. “You can see me, right, should I ask you how many fingers I’m holding up?”  
  
James almost laughed, which did more than anything else to dispel the newborn icy fear around Michael’s heart. “All right, you don’t have to pull out all the clichés. I’m not going to pass out. I’m okay.”  
  
“How many?”  
  
“Three. It was just unexpected. And they knew who I was, even…I try to avoid that, these days. I’m sorry, honestly, I thought I’d be better. I _am_ better; you can stop looking like you’re waiting for me to keel over. I do think I should go home….”  
  
“Not yet. Please.” He was still touching James’s face; he slid his hand up to cup the closest cheek in his. The freckles leaned into his touch, shivering. “Talk to me. Tell me…you said they were fans. I’m not asking why you don’t like that, I’m only wondering, fans of what?”  
  
At which Ian and Patrick performed puzzled head-tilts at him. Perfect synchronization.  
  
“What?”  
  
“James,” Ian said. “James McAvoy. Author. The First Class trilogy. You do read?”  
  
Michael froze in place for a second, kneeling at James’s side on the stony pub-kitchen floor, while his brain ran in disoriented circles. James _McAvoy_. Christ. Of _course_ he’d known the name.  
  
All three novels in the trilogy’d been bestsellers. Superhero stories, fantasy, but not only that: epic romance, ethical complexity, multifaceted metaphors. They’d hit some sort of international chord, perfect tale at the perfect time; anyone who’d ever felt alone could identify with the main characters, anyone who’d ever wished to be extraordinary could want to be them, anyone who had hope for the future could find it there.  
  
And, to a fairly significant amount of the audience, there was one more important point: the heart of the books, not the only romantic relationship but the key one, the one that lay under all the complicated moral arguments, was a story about two men falling in love, being parted by their ideals, and—at the end—finding each other again.  
  
No one’d known who the young Scottish author was, when volume one’d appeared. By the final installment, everyone did.  
  
That’d been two years ago. There’d been something else, he thought, more recently. Not another book; more dramatic and less detailed than that. Some sort of news. An accident, or an incident? Health-related? Michael, who’d read and enjoyed all three volumes when they’d come out, impressed by the depth of compassion in the writer’s words, had been too caught up in his own painful personal catastrophe by then to pay much attention.  
  
“Oh,” he said, because his brain wasn’t going to provide any assistance any time soon. “Oh. That—you—you’re—oh.”  
  
“You really didn’t know?” Patrick seemed skeptical. “You met at a bookshop.”  
  
“Outside a bookshop…I…wait, didn’t you have a beard?” He _knew_ he’d seen an author photograph somewhere. He’d thought at the time, pretty eyes, and also, that _can’t_ be a real ginger color, not with that hair.  
  
James started laughing, helplessly and with a touch of belated absurdist hysteria. “Oh, no…I did…my agent told me to grow it for the dust jacket photos…she said I’d look older…it grew in ginger and I thought, well, she told me to, so I just did all the photos like that and she nearly had a heart attack when they came back…”  
  
“That was _real?_ ”  
  
“Very much real…” James reached for him as if the gesture were natural; Michael put both arms around him and held him while the laughter wobbled in and out of tears.  
  
“Oh, god,” James said finally, head on Michael’s shoulder. “Thank you for that. I suppose that’s why more people aren’t recognizing me on the street; was it that bad?”  
  
“No, actually. You look like a very intellectual mountaineer, sort of.” Which made James dissolve into laughter again, barriers down, exhausted. Michael held onto him, and caught Patrick’s gaze: we’re not, I’m not, letting him be alone. Patrick nodded.  
  
The door swung open, and Hugh stuck his head inside. “Michael, I don’t know what the fuck an appletini is! I’ve barely figured out the beer!”  
  
“We’ll come and rescue you,” Ian said, getting to his feet. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, indeed…Michael, if you leave, we won’t say anything to Kevin. And neither will Hugh.”  
  
“Who, me? Why would I? Michael’s going to owe me free drinks for a month.”  
  
“If anyone owes you anything it’s me,” James said from the direction of Michael’s shoulder. “Just make some sort of tab for me and put yourself on it. I can pay for anything you want.”  
  
“You, quiet,” Michael said, and kept his arms around James. “Hugh, fair enough. Starting tomorrow.”  
  
Hugh saluted, started to duck back out, stopped. “Can I at least tell my daughter I’ve met you? I mean, the kid loves your books. Says you’re her role model.”  
  
“Me?” James said, sounding vaguely horrified. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
“Shh,” Michael said, and cradled that head against his shoulder.  
  
“You can’t tell anyone.” Patrick’s eyes were apologetic, but stern. “If anyone tells anyone else, and the press come in…”  
  
“Oh. Yeah, all right. No worries, James, okay?”  
  
“I can get her a signed copy of whichever book she likes best,” James offered. “Just let me know.”  
  
“Awesome.” Hugh vanished to, presumably, wrestle with appletinis. Michael sighed. “He’ll probably tell you she couldn’t pick one and get you to sign all three of them, you know.”  
  
James’s smile was a bit frayed around the corners, but visible. “I don’t mind. Especially if he doesn’t let it slip that I’m here.”  
  
“He won’t,” Ian muttered, in a tone that meant what it said.  
  
“I also meant it about the tab.” James looked at Michael. “I mean…if I’m going to be…coming back.”  
  
Suddenly the battered pub kitchen was entirely soundless. Even the ovens were listening.  
  
“You,” Michael said, and stopped.  
  
“It was all right, before the lack of personal space showed up.” James sat up, and somehow managed to pull off dignified certainty despite the arm around his shoulders and the damp tangle of his eyelashes. “I’ve missed sort of…seeing people. Both of you…” A wave at Patrick and Ian. “And, um. Michael. You still owe me a ride on your bike. If you want.”  
  
“I definitely want.” He offered a hand up, got James to mostly steady feet. Felt a little unsteady himself, being privileged to witness all that courage. “Can I take you home?”  
  
“Home…” James hesitated. “It’s still early, isn’t it? Not even eight? Did you have dinner?”  
  
“You want me to find you food?” He could do that. He could very much want to do that.  
  
“I don’t think I can handle a restaurant, or anything, but…” A breath, a lip-lick: nervous but determined. “You know my car’s back next to your place, anyway. Across the street.”  
  
Ian opened his mouth. Patrick, with no apparent change of expression, stepped on his foot.  
  
“You…want to…come over?” He thought he’d heard that correctly, but he couldn’t believe it.  
  
“Well…” One of those eloquent hands shaped a tiny gesture, half a wave, half a shrug: maybe? “I came here with you. I don’t…I don’t want to go home yet. I don’t want this to be how the night ends. If that makes sense.”  
  
It did, but Michael couldn’t answer immediately, caught in a snarl of admiration and concern. James added pensively, “Besides, I am sort of hungry. That’s new.”  
  
To which Michael and Patrick said, simultaneously, “New?” and then looked at each other. Ian said, “James, you _have_ been eating,” in a tone that proclaimed that, if James hadn’t, consequences might arise.  
  
“I have! I do like food. I meant…this time…this is different.” James looked up, at Michael. “I feel better, this time. Not like the last one.”  
  
“This happens…often?” He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until the answer came, and he could exhale.  
  
“No, because I make sure it doesn’t.” James sighed. “Can we stop treating me like an invalid, please? I’m talking, I’m breathing, I can count all ten of your fingers. And I am, incredibly, kind of hungry. So…”  
  
“Yes!” Michael burst out, and then hauled the overwhelming enthusiasm back with both hands. “Yes, of course, ah, my place is sort of—I didn’t clean or anything—but that’s fine, I don’t mind if you don’t, I want you to come over, yes, please, sorry.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“Um. I don’t know. Magazines on the floor?”  
  
“Oh, the horror. Might have to rethink my decision.”  
  
“Really?” He was ninety-nine percent sure that that’d been an attempt at teasing. Couldn’t hold back the question.  
  
“No. Of course not. You’re my protection from the drunken birthday Klingons; I’m staying next to you all night.”  
  
And Michael had to laugh, as the moment healed itself around them, bone-deep relief and growing newborn excitement. “I’m fine with that if you are. All night.”  
  
“Get out of here,” Ian said, radiating gleefulness from every line of his smile, “you two. Use the back door. Not a euphemism. Not on a first date, anyway.”  
  
“My dear,” Patrick said, “you know those times when there should not be any innuendo in your words?”  
  
“No?”  
  
“Well, there are those times. This was one of them.”  
  
Michael’d been looking at ocean-drift eyes for any sign of discomfort, but James took his hand without seeming to’ve heard. That felt natural, too. Like they’d always been meant to touch at that moment, in the age-worn cozy kitchen of a solid village pub, while the wind chuckled.  
  
As they ducked out the kitchen door and into the lane, James paused. Leaned back in, and said, “I might not mind a _little_ bit of innuendo, on a first date,” and the door closed on Ian’s delighted laughter.  
  
Michael raised eyebrows at him.  
  
“Oh…no, I don’t know, I felt like playing along.” Blushing, happily embarrassed and halfway if not more to recovered. “I mean…not that this is a…and I couldn’t…not that I wouldn’t want to, with you, I very much would if—why’re you smiling at me?”  
  
“Because,” Michael said, “you said you’d want the innuendo with me,” and James laughed out loud under the chilly starlight, breath clouding the night.

The walk wasn’t a long one, and fairly pleasant when not drowned in rain. They passed streetlights and cafes and stationery shops; their bookshop, and old medieval street signs, and the weekend farmers’-market square. The air remained very clear, a crispness like icicles, tangible; Michael could taste the cold, peppermint and ozone, on his tongue. Fall tumbling toward winter. Frost and sugar.  
  
James seemed content to be quiet, walking at his side. Michael automatically maneuvered them so that his own height could be between all the scarf-bundled freckles and any passing bodies; James cocked an eyebrow at him as if noting this development for future discussion, but let it go, and peeked into shop windows along the way, blue eyes investigating golden squares of light.  
  
“Anything interesting?”  
  
“Hmm? Oh…no, I just like looking. Window displays. Arrangements. What people choose to show to the world, to advertise themselves, what they think other people want…it says a lot about both sides, doesn’t it. What?”  
  
“Nothing,” Michael said, and kept smiling, watching James peer inquisitively at every decorated window they passed. “I’m enjoying the evening.”  
  
The moonlit-tide eyes paused mid-store to sweep up to his, laughing and incredulous. Tropical seas in an English-autumn night. “You are?”  
  
“Um. Except for the bit where you almost gave all three of us shared heart attacks. But…yes?”  
  
“Hmm,” James said, and started walking again; but one hand reached out for his, and because those gloves were fingerless Michael could feel the chilly dry hopefulness of James’s skin when they found each other.  
  
They meandered down the rest of the blocks hand in hand. Stopped for curry because James’s steps slowed at the drifting scent and Michael remembered and said, “Take-out?” and felt disproportionately pleased with himself when he got the smile, lighting up all the waves. Even more so when they were told it’d be a few minutes, and he looked at James, and James nodded: I’m fine with waiting, with being here, I’m here with you.  
  
James decided on something decadent with chicken and coconut milk and pineapple. Michael, opting for more heat and less sweetness, tried not to think about the way those lips would taste, sinful and exotic, under his.  
  
He also managed to pay for both because James was looking out at the street, and Michael hurriedly handed over more than enough cash. James turned back at the motion, but too late.  
  
“You didn’t have to.”  
  
“I wanted to.”  
  
“Next time it’s my treat, then.”  
  
“Next time.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
They stood there gazing at each other for a while. The hue of those eyes changed, Michael realized, when the smile appeared, playing around the edges of that expressive mouth. A deeper blue, luxuriant and layered, unfolding like secrets revealed.  
  
“Order ready!”  
  
They both jumped. James blushed, as much as was visible behind scarf and coat. Michael desperately wanted to know what he’d been seeing, looking back.  
  
Balancing food, they navigated around the corner and up to Michael’s building, unremarkable but fiercely proud regardless, holding its gaunt once-expensive walls up against the march of time. He couldn’t apologize for it, because it was unapologetic. It was what he could afford, and it was, in theory, temporary.  
  
Something about that word didn’t sit right in his stomach. Temporary. Rented. Impermanent.  
  
He glanced at James, who was touching the iron step-railing with trailing fingertips, stroking reassurance over fanciful Georgian curlicues and vines.  
  
Michael’d never thought about whether his front steps might like some affection. If they could’ve moved, they’d’ve arched like a purring cat, he thought, under that generous touch.  
  
When he opened the door, his landlady popped out, beamed at them, gave him a complicated elbow-nudge-and-wink combination that he wasn’t sure sweet little old ladies ought to know, and handed James a piece of fruitcake. James took it, somewhat bemusedly.  
  
“Don’t eat that,” Michael said, ushering him up the narrow stairs—James fit more neatly than he did, he noted, no head-ducking required—and through his own door. “I think she tried to give me the same piece last week. And possibly the day I got here. She means well.” He didn’t mention the winking. Nothing along those lines on the table, or the bed, or anywhere else for that matter. Decidedly not at the moment, anyway, with James so recently back on shaken feet and trying so hard to smile.  
  
Maybe, maybe, possibly, someday. James was brave and beautiful and liked motorbikes and tried to care for every other person in the world including Hugh, even when horribly off-balance himself. James was eminently kissable, with those bright lips and kind eyes, and James had called Michael attractive, which had to be a positive sign.  
  
But then there were all the other signs. The way James tensed at any attempt to touch. The hesitance behind the kindness, always wary around the edges of compassion. The indisputable fact that James’d been white as a ghost and shivering in his arms several minutes ago, and might not ever want to be reached for with desire.  
  
They could be friends, for now. He could be a good friend. He’d never really had that sort of friend before, not someone for whom he felt this strange need to cherish and admire and kiss everyplace and discover everything about, all at once.  
  
Potentially that wasn’t _exactly_ friendship.  
  
But he could still be James’s friend, because he _did_ care, and somehow James didn’t seem to mind leaning on him, and so Michael would do whatever he was able to do, to carry some of the weight.  
  
With a belated internal cringe, he spotted supercar-news magazines strewn across the tiny table. Dove for them, along with an abandoned half-drunk water bottle he’d forgotten to put back in the fridge. “Sorry!”  
  
“Oh, I’ve seen worse.” James started opening bags, setting out food. “This is better than my first place. When I first got to London, down from Glasgow, no job, no money, accent no one could understand…I had cockroaches in my sink on a daily basis. Even named one of them.”  
  
“That’s not helping me not worry about you.” He got out paper plates. Cringed again: he had a famous—no, _world_ -famous—author in his two-room temporary living space. With paper plates. “Can…I…get you a beer? Or, um, pumpkin ale?”  
  
“Pumpkin ale? By all means. Were you feeling festive?”  
  
“It is October.” He’d been curious. It was a local version. The flavors were always marginally different, and this one tasted nuttier and more earthy than his last.  
  
“I approve.” James gazed around: table, tiny kitchen area, sofa and television a few feet away, bedroom and bathroom doors visible in the hallway. He’d rented it furnished. Not as if he’d arrived with anything.  
  
“I mean of your place, not only your festive alcohol selection. It feels…friendly. Like, oh, a cardigan, that you borrow from someone else and it’s not yours so it’s a bit big and worn but it feels good and it makes you think of that person. Not my best metaphor, but you know what I mean.”  
  
Michael, to buy time, gulped down pumpkin ale without even considering the flavor. Looked at his flat again, with James’s eyes.  
  
The wood floor was old. Unpolished. But the rag rug atop it had been handmade by someone, quite possibly his landlady. The kitchen was too small for two grown men, but all the appliances hummed contentedly, cold when they should be cold and hot when they should be hot. The windows opened up into a view of the village street, seasonal-postcard perfect. And his own few possessions—those magazines, his bike helmet, his laptop with metal-head teenage-daydream Metallica stickers on the back—settled tidily into their places as if they’d never want to move.  
  
James nibbled on a potato, drenched in curry-spice, and didn’t speak. Only let him have the moment.  
  
“How long,” Michael said, softly, “has it been since you’ve gone out? Been anywhere, with people?”  
  
For some reason it didn’t seem to be a strange question, not intrusive but fitting, in the intimacy of the night. James finished off the potato-piece and picked up his own pumpkin-infused alcohol, turning the bottle around in graceful fingers. “If the expeditions into town for groceries and books don’t count…eight months, I’d say. A week or so less. And then there was you.”  
  
“Why’d you say yes? To coming with me, the pub, back here, everything?”  
  
“You talked to me like I was a person. Not like…not like a celebrity, and also not like someone who’d been—broken. You wanted to help, you weren’t Trying To Ignore It with capital letters, but you trusted me to know my own limits, when you asked me to come.” One finger picked at a tear in the bottle’s label, more thoughtful than distressed. “Not many people do that. And…I like having conversations with you.”  
  
“I like having conversations with you,” Michael said instantly, “too,” and pushed over the sticky rice, and blue eyes lit up in reply.  
  
They ended up curled into the sunken cushions of his much-worn sofa, at opposite ends because Michael was afraid to push the unanticipated closeness any further in one night. He did get up to find the quilt off his bed, and plopped it at James’s feet. “Here.”  
  
“Oh…I’m not that fragile…” But James tucked himself into the folds regardless, hair escaping in mischievous strands, the two freckles on the bridge of his nose twinkling against green-and-pink squares. “But thank you.”  
  
“It looks good on you.”  
  
Which earned another blush, but James wriggled around and stuck out one sock-clad foot and burrowed it under Michael’s ankle, so that was thoroughly fine. Everything, in fact, seemed to be fine, and infinitely lighter than the horrific moments back in the pub kitchen.  
  
He stretched his leg out a bit more, so they were touching in more places. Flipped on the television, discovered news, sports, Top Gear, and a movie he’d never seen involving Anjelica Huston as a hideously grotesque head witch.  
  
James sat up. “Wait, hang on, I like that one!”  
  
“You do?”  
  
“You’ve never seen _The Witches_? Terrifying. The ending of the book’s better—this one’s too happy—but it’s a Halloween classic.”  
  
“Okay…why’s that boy a mouse? Why’re they all eating soup?”  
  
“It’s Roald Dahl, don’t question it.”  
  
“They’re going to eat him!”  
  
“I knew you’d like it.”  
  
“This is traumatizing. They’re stepping on people. Mouse-people. You said this was _too happy_.”  
  
“Only the ending. Remind me to buy you a copy of the book.”  
  
“I’m not sure I can handle that,” Michael said as the commercial break began, and James laughed, looked at him as if considering a heretofore unheard-of concept, and then slid over on the sofa and leaned a shoulder against him and tugged the blanket over them both. “Any less traumatizing like this?”  
  
“You,” Michael said, “you…this…yes?” and took the closest hand in his and leaned his head atop James’s, and dark hair twirled up to tease his mouth. “Yes.”  
  
“Yes,” James said, and breathed out like the release of long-trapped anguish, and let his hand be held.  
  
The movie turned into _Hocus Pocus_ next, which Michael had in fact seen but pretended he hadn’t just to get the reaction. James sang along, not terribly, with Bette Midler, and Michael applauded and wanted to kiss him and privately vowed to learn every word of the song himself, for later.  
  
James settled more securely against him as the film went on, yawning. Michael, who’d been watching the screen, glanced down at one point and saw closed eyes and long lashes resting tiredly over cinnamon-sugar skin, and felt his heart glow, as if it too were bewitched.  
  
He hated to wake James, who’d had a day full of shocks and triumphs that Michael had only witnessed secondhand. He hated even the thought of disturbing those eyes. And that triggered another unaccustomed pulse of emotion in his chest, mingled pride and gratitude and knowledge of how fortunate he was: James felt this unguarded, this relaxed, here with him.  
  
Maybe they could just sleep on the adoring sofa. He’d not mind. He’d slept worse places.  
  
He did need to turn off the television, though—he’d never been able to sleep with dialogue in the background, white noise was one thing, but his brain always wanted to follow a narrative—and as he fumbled for the remote, dropped it, and swore under his breath, James woke up.  
  
Sat up, in fact, so fast the top of his head nearly hit Michael’s chin. His eyes were huge.  
  
“Hey,” Michael said, very carefully not moving, “I just dropped the remote, it’s okay, no evil witches, not even Bette Midler,” and James breathed in and held the quilt like patchwork armor, but his eyes looked lost.  
  
“I…fell asleep…”  
  
“I’m comfortable to sleep on?”  
  
“You…you didn’t…” James swallowed. The uncertainty in that gaze was heartbreaking. Michael felt the cracks all through his. “I don’t know what to do.”  
  
“Well…I might have an idea.” Continuing to not move. In case that might mean something. Even a small something, from the effort. “You could stay. I mean, it’s late, or late for normal people, I’m used to staying up, but you probably—you had a sort of, ah, complicated day. You can have the bed. That door has a lock on it, I don’t know why, paranoid tenants or something, not that I’d come in unless you told me I could, but just in case you, you know, want to. I can sleep out here.”  
  
“You would…you’d do that for me?” With eyes returning to a more usual size, less worldwide floods and more tea-saucers. “You wouldn’t mind?”  
  
“I’d rather you didn’t leave.” Honest in all sorts of ways; and James nodded slowly. “I could do that. You’re right about the day.” A quick astonishing half-smile, illuminating as the stars outside. “And…I think…you don’t want me to be alone? Sorry, that sounds horribly self-centered, but—”  
  
“Also right,” Michael said, setting the remote on a sofa cushion. “Not the self-centered part. The first part. I want to be here.”  
  
“I…” James’d been clutching the quilt like a life-preserver, knuckles white; but the fingers eased open, gradual as the rise of a sun on a misty morning. “Thank you. I feel as if I’m thanking you a lot, today.”  
  
“You can stop saying it, if you want. If you’d rather not sleep in jeans, I’ve probably got spare pyjama pants?”  
  
“Oh…” James put his head on one side, then smiled, unexpected and heartstoppingly lovely, armor tossed away all at once. “Yes, if you do. I’ve slept in my clothes before, but it’s not the most comfortable I’ve ever been.”  
  
“Hang on.” He started to swing legs off the sofa and get up; paused, caught wounded-sapphire eyes, and moved more deliberately, telegraphing each action first. James sat there bundled in Michael’s hand-me-down blanket, legs tucked under him reflectively.  
  
“Does that help?”  
  
“Ah…yes and no. I’m not scared of you, you know. I mean…not _you_.”  
  
“I know.” He wanted to ask. But James was tired. Don’t push, he reminded himself. Not now. “Bedroom? Oh, wait—”  
  
A hasty sprint down the hall and even more hasty tidying-up, clothes flung into a hamper, sheets pulled up, panting. He turned around in time to see James trying to hide a smile behind the quilt, leaning in the doorway. “It’s really not that bad. Just means someone lives here.”  
  
“…right.” He dug through dresser drawers, pulled out the fuzziest clean option he could find. “Um. You don’t mind Superman?” They weren’t _that_ garish. They were, however, covered in tiny logos. In his defense, they’d been on sale.  
  
James stopped even attempting to hide the smile. “Not at all. I always liked Batman better, but I can see you as Kal-El. Essentially decent inside. Buying books for strangers you meet in the rain.”  
  
“We’ve got another bookstore date, right?”  
  
“I did promise.” James stood there with hands full of superhero fuzziness and smiled at him. Michael retreated toward the door and floundered, “I should let you, you know, change,” because otherwise he was afraid his lips would decide to lunge across the space on their own.  
  
“Wait,” James said, as Michael took a step across the threshold. “Take the quilt. And also…can I see your mobile?”  
  
“You want my phone? Here.” To call someone? To uncover any of Michael’s deep dark secrets? He didn’t have any that he’d not be willing to let James know.  
  
Well. That was a new thought. He’d even tell James that story. About Steve. About why Steve was gone, and Michael was here.  
  
Would James want to know?  
  
“Here, done. This is, um, me. I sent myself yours, too.”  
  
“You…gave me your number?”  
  
“I would’ve anyway, but…” Another cometary smile, streaking through the soundless room. “So we’re not alone.”  
  
“Oh. _Oh_. You…”  
  
 _hi!_  
  
Michael laughed.  
  
 _I like hearing you laugh. :-)_  
  
“Same to you.”  
  
“Thank you. One more time for everything, I mean.” James looked at him, eyes full of the smile, of unspoken words. “I’ll be in your bed.”  
  
The door shut, fortunately covering up the inadvertent noise Michael’d just made.  
  
Eventually he got his legs to work, and tore himself away from the staring contest with stoic wood, and flopped onto the couch, and then grimaced because his couch tended to try to eat people who flopped onto it without warning.  
  
He did have the phone. In his hand and everything. And there was something he wanted to say.  
  
He poked at keys.  
  
 _James?_  
  
 _Making sure I don’t feel alone?_  
  
 _Yes. And also…_  
  
 _?_  
  
 _That was an innuendo…_  
  
 _Yes?_  
  
 _I mean yours. About the bed._  
  
 _Yes it was. It’s a good first date._  
  
“First date,” Michael echoed, to the sofa-cushions and the silent television. They cheered him on. Voiceless eagerness.  
  
He put his head on a cushion that became cooperative enough after a few thumps with a fist, and bundled himself under the quilt, the same quilt that’d been wrapped around James moments ago. The knowledge of that fact lingered like a physical certainty, connection in the frigid night.  
  
 _I like first dates with you._  
  
 _So do I. I mean with you not me. You know what I mean._  
  
 _Most of the time. And yes. And you should rest. Enjoy my bed._ He almost didn’t include the final sentence. Hovered over the backspace; hit send instead, and instantly second-guessed himself.  
  
The reply came back an instant later. _How’d you guess? I am. Very comfortable_.  
  
Michael might’ve whimpered again. Tried, and failed, not to be unfairly aroused. It wasn’t real, James had to be kidding, but he couldn’t stop the images. James in his bed, James enjoying his bed, James possibly also aroused in his bed, sliding a hand between his legs, where freckles might extend over well-muscled thighs; James touching himself, caressing his body, thinking of _Michael_ …  
  
He grabbed the cushion and shoved it over his face and breathed through the musty fabric scent. Maybe if he kept thinking about the sofa he could avoid coming in his pants, untouched, like a teenager.  
  
James was _wearing_ his pyjama pants. He groaned out loud.  
  
His mobile went off again. _Everything all right?_  
  
 _Yes fine sorry!_  
  
 _Okay…_  
  
 _Seriously fine! Just getting comfortable here too._  
  
 _Michael?_  
  
 _?_  
  
 _I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I’m here. With you._  
  
He still had a relentless erection and an unformed sense of guilty excitement over the intensity of his desire, just from text-message flirtation. But suddenly the unfulfilled frustration was less important than the warmth in his chest. His body could ache with need; but he’d made James feel safe.  
  
In his flat, in his arms on the sofa, in his bed. He’d made James feel safe.  
  
He stretched out on the lumpy cushions and felt like a sentry, a watchman, a bodyguard, entrusted with the security of those shining eyes. James could stay protected behind the shut door, and Michael could lie here on the sofa, and guard that door.  
  
He sent back, _So am I_ , and fell asleep with the phone cradled to his cheek.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Michael learns some things--though not everything, not yet--about James.

It wasn’t stalking, Michael reasoned, if the news story already existed. If he recalled having read it previously.   
  
He tapped at the laptop keyboard. He did have a time frame; nearly eight months, James’d said. And it had been newsworthy.   
  
James had woken first, that enchanted morning four days previously. Had already been coming to terms with Michael’s cheap plastic coffeemaker when he’d stumbled upright, yawning and bleary with sleep. He’d all but managed to convince himself that it’d been a nighttime imagining, that he didn’t have bottomless jewel-box eyes and treasure-trove freckles in his bed in any sort of reality, he’d slept on the sofa in his clothes out of simple exhaustion, and then James’d popped his head out of the kitchen.  
  
He’d fallen off the sofa. Impressively literally.  
  
“Sorry!” James had run over to his side. “I was trying to be quiet. I know you sleep during the day, mostly. Except when you’re taking care of me. Which—”  
  
“If you’re going to say thank you again, don’t.” He’d waved his mobile, accepted the hand up even though he didn’t need it, and then had two realizations in rapid succession, first that James was rather stronger than that height and compact build suggested, and second that this was a heretofore unknown instant cause for lust.  
  
He’d grabbed the quilt in a very strategic place and finished, “I mean, I get to have your phone number,” and hoped he didn’t look too ridiculous in the unforgiving light of day, bed—or sofa-cushion—hair and lines on his face and morning scruff and quilt around his waist, while the celebrity author stood extremely close to him and didn’t let go of his hand.  
  
“So you do. Coffee? You didn’t have anything that wasn’t excruciatingly dark and strong, so I figured that was how you liked it, so that’s what’s in the pot. And this cup.”  
  
Michael had accepted the steaming mug with bewildered hands. “That’s…not how you like it, is it?” The extra-bold roast mocked his nose. He drank it for the sake of utility, to get him out of bed; he’d never thought much beyond the practical applications of the caffeine.  
  
All at once he’d felt like a failure for not having done so. The great coffee tragedy of his life. World-famous writer, man of his actual dreams, walking out because Michael’d not been a good enough host to have sugar or coffee creamer.  
  
“I improvised,” James had said, all merry Scottish competence, “with some of the leftover coconut milk from last night. Came out sort of creamy and spicy. Not sweet enough, but not bad.”  
  
“…I can buy sugar?”  
  
“For all the future times I fall asleep in your bed?” At which Michael nearly dropped the coffee, and James himself looked shocked at his own words. “I mean…I…I wouldn’t…you let me stay over once, and that was—”  
  
“I like you staying over,” Michael’d jumped in over the sentence, interrupting but needing to get the sentiment out. “I’ll buy sugar. And proper creamer. Hazelnut, peppermint, vanilla, toffee…”  
  
“Well…maybe not all at once?” But the extraordinary eyes had said even more, meeting his in the slanted gilt-dust sunbeams of morning.  
  
He looked back at his laptop, in the present solitary afternoon. A stripe of sunshine fell over the sofa-arm, indolent and curious.   
  
He typed, one letter at a time _, james mcavoy fan incident_ into the open Google search bar. It wasn’t any sort of betrayal, was it? James was _famous_. And it wasn’t as if Michael was attempting to dig up his childhood. He _knew_ there’d been a story.  
  
James had given him the time frame. James was obviously distressed around fans of his work, or people who knew his identity. That was about all he had to go on.  
  
James had left after finishing the coffee, bundled up in scarf and coat against the bite of the air. Michael’d walked him out to his car, as the frosty sunbeams spilled over hair and freckles and outlined long eyelashes. Had thought again of artwork, photography, light streaming around that sturdy figure like a halo.  
  
He’d offered to buy breakfast, which at that point would’ve been closer to lunch. James had hesitated, shaken his head, said he needed to go home. Had nibbled at his lower lip, glanced at Michael’s face, put a hand on Michael’s arm.  
  
Had added, softly, that he wanted to. But he needed space.   
  
Michael’d nodded, trying hard to understand, and James’s hand had tightened over his forearm. It’s not you, in that lochs-and-sunrise accent. It’s not. I do want to. But I just need to breathe for a few hours. By myself.  
  
Michael’d nodded again, because he did get it, he really did; for someone who’d spent eight months talking to no one but the occasional cashier at a grocery store or bookshop or post office, the past day and night must’ve eviscerated all of those hard-won reserves.  
  
James had asked what time Michael’s shift began at the pub. Michael, distracted by the hand still resting on his arm, had answered belatedly, four.   
  
James had smiled again, hope billowing across the lochs, and promised to meet him there.  
  
When he’d finally gone back into his flat and exhaled and slumped back against the door, he’d glanced down into the bedroom and discovered that James’d not only made the bed but neatly folded Michael’s pyjama pants and left them at the foot.  
  
James McAvoy, world-renowned author, had made his bed and folded his clothing and eaten curry in his flat and promised to see him later.  
  
Michael might’ve done some after-the-fact jumping around and fist-pumping and at least one rapturous sprint to the store for multiple flavors of coffee creamer. He wasn’t ashamed.  
  
He was also currently stretched out on the sofa on his stomach, feet up, and wondering whether he should hit enter and let Google tell him about James’s past. He’d been fighting the urge for three and a half days. He was losing.  
  
He _could_ look it up. Anything in the news wasn’t going to be a secret. And he wanted to know. No, he needed to know; if there was some way he could help, or subjects he should avoid, he had to find out. Since James was going to see him later. To see him again, exactly on time, the way they had so far every day this week.  
  
 _Four_ days of the week. That was more than half. More than half meant commitment, right?  
  
James hadn’t come home with him again. The pub had been having busy evenings. Hectic. James’d not been able to stay long, though he’d tried, getting visibly more unsettled with each new arrival. Michael _did_ sympathize, and nevertheless wanted to snarl at the heedless stars when he walked through floating curry flavors on his way home.  
  
James had been texting him. _Good morning_ and _can you possibly make a pumpkin-flavored martini_ and _I wrote two pages today_ and _I’ve bought you a book_. Michael, alone in his bedroom and half-dressed, had given in to the impulse and done a shirtless dance in place with his mobile phone at the last one.   
  
He’d sent back a picture. All the varieties of coffee creamer living in his fridge. James had responded with a smile.  
  
He came home from work wanting to talk to James. He woke up and wanted to talk to James. The first thing he did, even before sitting up, had become the checking of his phone.  
  
And James was hurt, or had been; there was a reason James couldn’t stay if the pub got crowded. And maybe if he knew more about it, he could do more, could help, could try.  
  
He hit the key, put his hands over his face as if that’d deflect the guilt, and then gave up and dropped them and stared at the search results.  
  
So _many_ search results. None too recent, though. The most contemporary hit was simply internet forum speculation: where is James McAvoy now? The fan theories ranged from logical—sequestered and working on the next book, something not First Class and brand new—to far less so. Michael was pretty certain James hadn’t been kidnapped by alien worshipers of his bestselling novels. Anyway, that sounded like the plot of _Galaxy Quest_.  
  
James had a lot of fans. With a _lot_ of creativity. He contemplated some of the art for a while, then shook himself and went back to his search purpose, though he did save a couple Professor X/Magneto drawings to show to James if he ever got the chance.  
  
He scrolled through results, and found some actual news stories from closer to the right date. And then he stopped, frozen.  
  
The headline he was reading said starkly, Author James McAvoy In Hospital After Fan Altercation.   
  
The one under it, next in the results, proclaimed more dramatically, James McAvoy Injured At Book Signing! Author Vanishes From Hospital!  
  
There were a few other headlines. They all provided variations on the theme.  
  
Michael’s finger clicked the first one, moving on its own, while the sunbeam fell off the couch-arm and the world clouded over.  
  
The body of the article didn’t give much more detail. James had been doing a book signing at a prominent store in London. There’d been some unspecified incident involving a fan. There’d been an ambulance.   
  
James had spent the night at a local hospital. James hadn’t pressed charges. James had, the morning after, either checked himself out calmly or disappeared without a trace depending on who was telling the tale, and no one’d seen him since.  
  
What _sort_ of incident?  
  
None of the stories seemed to know. It was maddening. Michael opened them all, even the garish tabloid ones with extra exclamation points, in desperation. Nothing.  
  
One of them contained a very blurry photo, snapped as paramedics were helping James into the ambulance. It was difficult to tell, but James appeared to be standing more or less on his own, and not bleeding anywhere, no red, though his skin was visibly white even in the grainy photograph. Michael unthinkingly put a finger on his laptop screen, as if he could provide support through the pixels and time.   
  
The most lurid of the tabloids decided that James must’ve had some sort of nervous breakdown during the book signing, and theorized with abandon about any drugs he might’ve been on, what a fan could’ve said to trigger a snap, why he’d’ve vanished from the hospital, whether he might be living as a homeless person on London streets. Michael snorted. James wasn’t crazy. James was…wounded, yes, but intelligent and rational and probably saner than the writer of this particular piece.  
  
And then he stopped, and thought again. James wasn’t insane, no, and the nervous breakdown theory was manifestly untrue, but.   
  
But James was here, where no one knew him, where he’d gone out of his way to hide. And _something_ had happened.   
  
Whatever’d gone on that day, it hadn’t been James’s fault. The stories agreed on that much. It was James who’d decided not to press charges, and the fan in question had been the one who’d called the ambulance. The man’d refused to be interviewed, but had been overheard apologizing.  
  
For what? _Why?_  
  
Of course it hadn’t been James’s fault. Michael knew that without needing proof. The person who’d given him an umbrella and made him coffee and tentatively held his hand walking down the street would never hurt an admirer of his.   
  
The incident had been serious enough to keep James in a hospital bed overnight. One of the otherwise calmer articles mentioned sedation. Michael initially wanted to argue with that one too, and then pictured James in the pub a few days before, shaking like a leaf on a breaking branch. With icy hands.  
  
 _Was_ there something wrong? Was James ill? Or injured somehow? Something Michael couldn’t see?  
  
The laptop wasn’t giving him any answers, and he felt restless, uneasy, needing to be in motion.   
  
He pushed himself to his feet. Paced the room, and then, when that proved inadequate, grabbed his sweats and changed in a flurry of clothing and flung himself out the door. He had time for a short run. Time to think about only sweat and pounding feet and the pleasant drag of exhausted muscles and not the mysteries he couldn’t solve, the fear behind blue eyes.  
  
He ran out into the woods and followed the packed-dirt invitation of his favorite path, the one that wound twistingly up towards the fairy cottage. It was about the right distance, if he wanted to be back and cleaned up before work.  
  
Before James came to see him at work. Michael gulped air, stumbled on a rock, kept going. He was finding the rhythm of the run, feet hitting the ground, blood pumping. Steady. Meditation.  
  
He made it up to the clearing, where the little house sat nestled like a Victorian painting amid the trees, his mind blessedly blank for just a few moments, no famous authors and expectations and emotion-laden mysteries. Just his pulse and his breaths and sweat in his eyes.  
  
A leaf landed in his hair.  
  
He jogged around, careful not to get too near, giving the cottage its space. Like James, he thought: skittish and unexpected and lovely, wary and worthy of more care than it was being given. Somewhere in that thought was a commitment. He recognized it, but didn’t pursue it. Later.  
  
The tire tracks in the unpaved road back to the shed looked newer this time. A groundskeeper? Someone visiting? No sounds from the house, though he could’ve sworn he tasted coconut in the air, fleeting and evocative.  
  
Probably just because he was thinking about kissing James. About the coconut coffee creamer in his refrigerator at home.   
  
Home, he thought, and the lazy autumn sunshine brushed over his sweaty head, and leaves murmured rusty welcome in the breeze, scarlet and bronze and crackly-voiced and peaceful.  
  
Peaceful. Michael stood there and panted and felt his shirt sticking to his back and his legs burning happily, and said to the ivied cottage walls, thank you, not out loud.  
  
And then he turned and ran for home. He’d need to shower. And find a good shirt, one that fit and wasn’t a faded metal-band advertisement and maybe even buttoned up. Because he wanted to look good, for James.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which James takes some steps back into the world, Michael talks about his past, and the sofa is extremely happy to accommodate some kissing.

Of course life wasn’t that easy. He came through the door to find his mobile ringing and Kevin informing him that Hugh was out for the day—wife having a baby, evidently, which was the first Michael’d known about this development—and no one was in the kitchen and also two of the waitstaff were sick, which meant _all_ of the waitstaff were sick, because they only _had_ two, and so could Michael please come in early, and also if he knew anyone who could cook, having the kitchen open would be a very good thing in a pub, and so please call him back…  
  
Michael sighed, dove into the shower, scrubbed the woods and the tiredness out of his hair, couldn’t think of anyone he’d met who might be persuaded to take on Hugh’s job—Ian might, but Michael shuddered to think what double entendres might emerge from the kitchen in edible form—and showed up an hour early and nonfiguratively smacked his own forehead upon noticing he’d taken his coat and left his decent shirt tossed atop his bed.  
  
James seemed to like him regardless of his clothing, even when said clothing came with spilled-vodka remains. Maybe it’d be okay.  
  
He helped Nicholas cope for a while, explaining to grumbling locals that, no, food did not exist, even if they’d been coming in for the previous five years, today would be an exception, here, have a drink; and in his spare time experimented idly with coconut rum and blue curacão and pineapple-guava juice. Tropical. Like beaches. Shores with blue seas and skies. He could put an umbrella in it. James would enjoy that one.  
  
He tried not to watch the clock too closely, but couldn’t help counting down, as the time neared. Fifteen minutes to four. Ten.  
  
The anticipation never went away. Every day, so far. The same giddy feeling.  
  
Five minutes. Nicholas, washing out a shaker, cleaning up, said, “Are we expecting him again?”  
  
“…what?”  
  
“Your person. With the eyes. Cute. Is he actually famous? Hugh and Ian and Patrick seem to think so.”  
  
“He’s not my—I mean, he sort of—if he wants to—hang on, _cute_?”  
  
“Hey, I’m not even gay, and I’d go for that.” Nick held up both hands at Michael’s glare. “Okay, okay, back off, no need to make the jealous shark face. I know he comes here for you. And you get all…dreamy-eyed when he walks in. I’m not a poet. But he is famous, right?”  
  
“You’re right. You’re not. And I am _not_ a jealous shark.” He probably did get dreamy-eyed, though. Not his fault. He’d like to see anyone help it, as James came through the door, shaking off the cold and meeting his gaze across the room and beginning to smile…  
  
“You so are. You are right now.”  
  
“Stop talking,” Michael said, and watched the door for signs of movement.  
  
“You should take him out on an actual date. Not here. You _work_ here.”  
  
Michael looked at the highball glass in his hand, then at Nick’s head, pointedly.   
  
“Just saying,” Nick said, and tossed down his dish towel. “And I’ve been here since eight this morning, so I’m going home. You have fun. Kiss him, maybe.”  
  
“I’m not going to kiss him!”  
  
“I’m sure he’ll be disappointed to hear that. Find another bartender, maybe.”  
  
“You are _not_ endearing yourself to me.”  
  
“If he’s famous, he can have all the bartenders he wants. Not only the ones with shark teeth.”  
  
“Grown-up things,” Michael said. “Complicated. That you don’t understand. Puppy.”   
  
“Puppies’re more cuddly than sharks,” Nicholas retorted, and ducked past the person in the doorway. “Hi, James. Don’t cut yourself on his teeth.”  
  
James looked at the closing door, then at Michael. “Did I miss a very important announcement regarding pub mascots?”  
  
“Nicholas says crazy words,” Michael said, and then snapped his mouth shut, because oh god he’d just been reading those rumors about nervous breakdowns and mental collapses and James must’ve seen those rumors too and he’d just made a colossally huge faux pas and James was going to frown at him…  
  
James _was_ frowning slightly, eyebrows drawn together. “Everything all right?”   
  
“Fine—or, well, not exactly fine, we’re shorthanded tonight.” True, and a good excuse. He got out ingredients and started pouring, the idea he’d been fiddling with earlier; James settled onto the usual bar stool at the end, shed woolly coat and scarf, and followed his hands.   
  
“Is that for me? Also, shorthanded?”  
  
“It is, and yes. Hugh’s having the baby. Um. His wife. Hugh’s wife is having the baby, and it’s two weeks early, so he’s with her. No kitchen.”  
  
“We should do something nice for them. I have no idea what, but something.” James spotted the decorative umbrella, laughed, ran a hand through his hair. “I can see you’ve put some thought into this. Very picturesque.”  
  
“Tell me if you like it.” He could only manage simple sentences. James’d said _we_.  
  
“I absolutely like it.” With a second, longer sip, tasting flavors, letting them glide over his tongue. “Coconut rum, mostly? Blue curacão for the color, but not too much, because it doesn’t taste that much like oranges…pineapple juice?”  
  
“Not bad,” Michael said. “Pineapple-guava. Pretty soon you can have my job.”  
  
“I prefer you having your job.” James ran a fingertip along the side of the glass, collecting condensation. The water shimmered on his skin. Michael bit down hard on the inside of his cheek.  
  
“You said Hugh was gone…you don’t have anyone to cover? In the kitchen?”  
  
“No one on short notice. Ian might’ve tried, but he and Patrick’re doing that volunteer night at the high school. Drama club event.”  
  
“Ah.” A finger-tap, over the glass. “Well…I do know how to. Maybe. If you want that.”  
  
“James, you know I don’t speak invisible words. How to what?” Teasing, and James plainly heard it as such, from the grin.   
  
“See if you’re invited to the invisible person dinner party, then. I meant help out. I can cook.”  
  
“Is there anything you can’t do?” Michael said, just to get that expression once more.  
  
“It won’t be anything terribly impressive. I’m not—it’s been maybe ten years since I worked in a bakery. Pumpkin-ginger scones? Zucchini flatbread? Cream-cheese muffin-tops? I’m better at pastries, but I can handle protein, if you have it. Thoughts?”  
  
“Where have you been all my life?” Michael inquired, and then heard his own words as James blushed ferociously, pink smothering all the tentative freckles. All his life. With James. It was surprisingly easy to picture. Scones and motorbikes and those remarkable smiles.  
  
“You don’t have to,” he said, “really. We’ll survive for a night, and it’s not like anyone’s going to feel deprived without Hugh’s cooking. I’m not going to make you work, when you—” There was no good way to end that sentence, nothing that didn’t sound vaguely insulting, which he didn’t mean and didn’t want; he edited, “when this is sort of me asking you out on a date?” which he’d just now figured out was also true.  
  
James’s drink froze halfway to his lips.  
  
“I mean,” Michael attempted, “not that it’s a _good_ date, oh god not because of you, I like spending time with you, you’re amazing, it’s just I’m working, you know, and I keep asking you to come in here while I’m working, and that’s not fair, is it, because you deserve flowers and expensive restaurants and books as presents and I’m sort of terrible at taking you anywhere but I promise I will and also you really don’t have to work?”  
  
James set his glass down, very precisely. Looked into all the blue as if it might hold some answers.  
  
“I can try to make it up to you?”  
  
“You don’t have to take me anywhere.” James held out his hand, across the bar. Michael, astounded by the offer, the initiation, took it in both of his.   
  
“I wouldn’t be very…very good in expensive restaurants, anyway. And I don’t need flowers.”  
  
“Maybe books?” Michael said, in the pause, and got the smile.  
  
“Maybe books. If you feel like getting me something. But this…I like being here. With Patrick, and Ian, and Hugh, and you, of course you…this feels like something I can do. And you’ve already given me that.” James reached over with his other hand, so they ended up with all four hands clasped, over the placid shining wood. The gesture might’ve felt melodramatic or overwrought, but it didn’t. It resonated, like an oath. Ritual. Binding.  
  
“I don’t mind saying thank you. If you need me to help out, for one night…I can.” Accompanied by a sudden coruscating smile, sun breaking through the drowsy wooden pub. “Besides, if I cook for you, that’s like another piece of the date?”  
  
I love you, Michael almost said. Bit the words back at the last conceivable second. Could he mean it? _Did_ he mean it?   
  
He wanted James, he knew; his heart performed a complicated gymnastic leap every time they touched, fingertips and skin and smiles that felt like a kiss. He saw the shadows that moved behind the sapphire depths, complex and wounded; he wanted to banish every last one with a force that shocked him with its power, and he knew that he maybe never could, and he knew that he’d never stop hoping to learn the darkest shapes and outlines and then hold James against the incursions.  
  
He’d run from London, from his old life, because he’d said _I love you_ , and the man he’d said it to had looked at him and said, _I’m sorry_ …  
  
There’d been more to it, but at the core, the distilled raw aching center, that was the truth. And he’d never meant this retreat to be permanent. He’d never thought he’d find blue eyes and freckles and pain, so far from the self-assured let-the-world-keep-up-with-me vision he’d admired so much, fallen so deeply for, under camera lights and confident direction.  
  
He knew what he _wanted_ , with those hands cradled in his. Was that love? Was that fair to James?  
  
James, no doubt hearing only Michael’s paralyzed silence, took his hands away. Took his gaze away, too, ocean-jewel eyes sliding down to find a chair-leg, a knothole in wood, the floor.  
  
“No—” Michael said frantically, and started to grab for retreating fingers; remembered too late, and jerked his hand back even as James instinctively did the same.   
  
“Oh, god, sorry—I’m sorry, I didn’t—James, please, I wasn’t thinking. Did I—did that—” Scare you? He couldn’t say that. But the thought that those beautiful eyes might’ve flinched because of _him_ seared like vicious lightning into his heart.  
  
But James shook his head, and didn’t quite look up, but did uncurl fingers in his direction. “It’s not your fault.”  
  
“Yes, it is. I’m an idiot sometimes.” He accepted those fingers with care, running his own over them, memorizing calluses, joints, a scuffed nail-bed. “I was only trying to figure out how to tell you how lucky I feel. That you’re here with me.”  
  
James did look up then, blue unfurling like wide-open skies. “You do?”  
  
“Extremely.” He lifted that hand, dropped a kiss over cold freckles, lingered long enough to breathe warmth out over uncovered skin. “Can I buy you gloves along with the books? With actual fingers? What good do these do?”  
  
This earned another smile, recovered, rediscovered. “I like having my fingers. For writing. Besides, I also have you. You can be my hand-warmer.”  
  
“I will,” Michael promised, “I will,” and, when James folded those fingers around his in reply, he felt like a hero, like a knight out of romance, sword offered up to the service of blue eyes and any evil dragons they might need slain.   
  
“So,” James said. “Kitchen? I can see what you’ve got?”  
  
“If you want to.” The pub wasn’t full yet; not even their favorite resident Shakespeareans had appeared, but he knew Patrick and Ian were volunteering with some local school drama-club project at the moment. They’d be in later, spilling over with enthusiasm and the need for post-student alcohol in equal parts, he guessed.  
  
Contemplative eyes assessed the contents of kitchen shelves, the depths of refrigerators, the well-maintained aging burners and oven-space. “I can work with this. I don’t know your menu, though, so if I just sort of…make things, at first…can you tell people what’s available? I’ll do smaller amounts, I can always make more, if people very much desire blackberry tarts.”  
  
“I might desire blackberry tarts,” Michael said, truthfully. Especially if made by those hands. “And it’s not as if Hugh even knows the menu. I’m not sure he knows _recipes_. Don’t worry.”  
  
“Oh, he’s not that bad. He’s just…”   
  
“Yes he is.”  
  
“I’ll make one with extra blackberries. If you like them.”  
  
The building moment was shattered by a musical crunch from beyond the doors. “Pint glass,” Michael said, and tried not to wince. “On the floor. I should…”  
  
“Yes, go on,” James said, and waved him off, already gazing at the oven in voiceless communion. Michael, heart suspiciously warm and fuzzy, sighed and went out the door.  
  
James, it became quickly apparent, had vastly undervalued his own culinary skills. Michael’d collected all the menus and hid them, so no one would make any complicated demands; he’d found the Daily Specials chalkboard and started writing down whatever James put his head out of the door and suggested, and he’d hoped that it would all work out okay.  
  
 _Okay_ was not the word. _Miraculous_ potentially was.   
  
James had started with cinnamon-sugar biscuits, because, he’d said, they were easy and he was out of practice. Michael dutifully wrote this on the chalkboard, took a bite of one because James held it up to his mouth, and all but had an orgasm on the spot.  
  
“Fuck. Me.”  
  
James laughed. “Good, then?”  
  
“James, store-bought biscuits can be good. _This_ is worthy of its own religion.”  
  
“So…you think people won’t mind? That they’re basically getting whatever I feel like?”  
  
“Did you not hear me? They’re going to worship you. Can I have another one?”  
  
“Of course,” James said, “it’s all for you anyway,” and then blushed, but when the blackberry tarts came out of the oven, there was an extra-large one with a Star Wars Rebel Alliance symbol in pie crust on the top, and Michael laughed so hard he had to duck behind the bar to regain composure and avoid the interested stares.  
  
The dinner rush picked up after six, and Michael dealt with this by standing up behind the bar and announcing that the kitchen was taking no requests, but whatever came out was up for sale; this turned into a good-natured bidding war over the last cinnamon biscuit, and Michael put his head into the kitchen and said, “James, someone just paid _ten pounds_ for half a biscuit,” and James looked up from slicing potatoes and laughed.  
  
The next item out was a basket of chips. They were ideal chips. Golden, fluffy, crunchy. The platonic fried potato. Michael sneakily ate three before selling them off, and wondered what James’d said to the fryer to charm it into behaving.  
  
It’d likely just taken one look at those eyes and resolved to be the best fryer it conceivably could be. That was more or less the effect on every other person in the universe, too.  
  
He started holding impromptu auctions. A slice of orange-sesame loaf. Golden-brown beef pasties. Little balls of toasted cheese—James was clearly reaching some sort of accord with the oven—and fluffy lighter-than-air doughnuts.   
  
This last came out a second time, in slightly different form: built into a tower, dusted with sugar, complete with tiny battlements and a toasted-caramel flag. Michael stared at it when James called him in for help carrying it out, said, “We can’t eat that, it’s a work of art!” and took pictures on his phone.  
  
More and more people turned up, summoned by texts or calls or a desire to join in the most interesting development since the legendary Arthur Conan Doyle visit of the previous century. Michael’d never seen the place so packed.   
  
Some of them were simply coming for the sheer fun, as James got more creative and a few enterprising and tipsy souls started placing bets on the next culinary escapade. Most of them fell in love with whiskey-smoked chicken sandwiches or pumpkin-butter brownies. James was at his best, Michael concluded, with sweets and baked goods; not that the heartier efforts weren’t also delicious, but seemed to turn up more randomly, as if James were mentally reminding himself that people finishing a long work day probably couldn’t live on coconut fairy cakes.  
  
At one point he added up the income from the night. Drew a mental circle around the total, and wondered whether Kevin needed to do any remodeling.  
  
James stopped venturing out of the kitchen, which he’d been expecting as the crowd swelled. He’d honestly been expecting that much sooner; he guessed that James had been a bit curious to see how the efforts were going. He tried to run through the doors whenever he had a spare moment, and brought along water and the occasional pint of cider because James had vetoed anything stronger while sticking his hands into scorching ovens.  
  
“Still good?”  
  
“Wonderful.” James grinned, shook hair out of his eyes, paused to take the glass and drink and swallow. There was a line of sweat at his throat, shining, and flour over one cheekbone. Michael stifled a whimper, watching the motion as he drank. “A little tired, but that’s my own fault. I’ll slow down. I’d forgotten how much fun it could be, working in a real kitchen.”  
  
“After this, I think you’d only have to wave at Kevin and you’d have a job.”  
  
“If the writing doesn’t work out?” James laughed. “We’ll see. Are there still hordes, out there?”  
  
“Um…yes. I’m sorry.”  
  
“No, it’s a compliment. I’m all right in here. You can be my barricade.”  
  
“I can be a very devoted barricade,” Michael said, and collected the now-empty cider glass. “More?”  
  
“Ah…not immediately, unless you’re hoping to watch me fail to ice gingerbread while drunk, but yes. Take this out?”  
  
Michael picked up the macaroons obediently, opened the door, and said, “James? Patrick and Ian’re here.”  
  
“Oh…” James looked back at the unpopulated kitchen-space, all decadent scents and private warmth, not thronged with unfamiliar bodies. “I…want to see them. But.”  
  
“I’ll send them in,” Michael suggested, and James blew him a kiss, breath glancing off fingertips and into Michael’s heart, where it spun into that unaccustomed thrill all over again.  
  
Ian and Patrick were, predictably, delighted. They looked at James as if wanting to hug him; James smiled slightly and came forward and let himself be embraced. Asked how their mentoring’d gone, because of course James would remember to ask.  
  
Ian began telling the story, complete with sweeping hand gestures, of their favorite young over-enthusiastic actor and his attempts at Ophelia, water-bottle mock-drownings and tragic thrashings in a puddle on stage. Patrick, while James was listening and nodding with every evidence of rapt attention, quietly detoured over to shake Michael’s hand.  
  
Michael shook his head; said, “It was his idea,” and Patrick’s smile grew. “Because of you, I’d guess.”  
  
“Because of him.” They watched James laugh, hands in motion as ever, sketching merriment in the gingerbread-flavored air. “He’s amazing.”  
  
“Yes,” Patrick said, “he is. If you hurt him, after this, you are aware that Ian and I will personally disembowel you.”  
  
“…I’d deserve it.”  
  
Patrick evidently hadn’t expected this reply.   
  
“I mean it,” Michael said, and followed the excited arcs of freckled fingers with his eyes. “I don’t—I don’t know a lot of things. Right now. But that is something I know. I’ll be here.”  
  
“You two,” James said, coming over, Ian in his wake, “look awfully serious. Broken gingerbread?”  
  
“Do you have to ask,” Patrick said, and took the largest piece.  
  
“James,” Michael said, “you’re amazing,” and James nearly dropped the gingerbread. “What was that—I mean, why would you—”  
  
“Because you are.”   
  
“I,” James said, and looked everywhere but at Michael’s face, “I’m not—don’t—here, take this out and see if anyone wants it, I’m going to make a surprise for you two—” This meant Patrick and Ian, who vibrated with excitement. “—out of the unbroken bits, all right? Go out there and wait?”  
  
“All right,” Michael said, taking the plate, but he made sure their fingers touched as he did. “James?”  
  
Blue eyes studied gingerbread, and then came up to settle on his.  
  
“I mean it,” Michael told him, gently but with his heart in the words; James licked his lips, breathed in once, answered equally softly, “I know,” and Michael, someplace inside, started setting off fireworks and doing somersaults and dancing under the stars, but said, “I’ll take this out for you, then,” and left accompanied by the answering smile.  
  
The feeling of companionship, of flame-blue eyes at his side and celebrations in his veins, never went away. Not even when he had to make the fifteenth appletini in a row for a giggling group of too-flirtatious girls.  
  
He didn’t need to be flirted with. He had James.  
  
James’s surprise turned out to be a very precisely constructed gingerbread replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, balconies and all, elegant swoops of icing and chocolate thatching along the roof, tiny figures on the stage. Patrick and Ian rhapsodized in iambic pentameter. The crowds applauded and demanded to share, and Ian waved a martini glass at them menacingly.  
  
“Ours!”  
  
“Michael,” Nicholas said from somewhere in the crowd, “make them share.”  
  
“Not my job,” Michael said cheerfully, picking up a martini glass. “Come and help make appletinis.”  
  
“I’m off work!”  
  
“Michael?” James stuck his head out from the door, which made Michael instantly spin around. Compass to true north. Magnetic. “Could you—”  
  
“Speaking of our guest chef,” Ian said happily. “James, wave at the nice people!”  
  
“I don’t—”  
  
“You’re awesome!” someone yelled from the back. James’s eyes went enormous.  
  
Michael set down the glass and crossed over to him. Put an arm around his shoulders, back turned to their audience as a shield, and murmured, “You don’t have to wave at anyone, but they do love you,” and James laughed and glanced away. “I really just needed your help getting more potatoes, they’re on the top shelf and I can’t reach…”  
  
“I’m here for all your potato-related needs.” James, tucked under his arm, felt exactly right, compact and snug and sturdy. Michael’d never wanted to kiss anyone quite so badly in his life. He took refuge in another sentence. “You know you don’t have to keep cooking for them. All the ravenous mouths. They can manage on their own.”  
  
“I don’t mind,” James said, “I like cooking,” and then actually peeked around him and offered a small half-wave. Nine-tenths of the pub cheered. The rest kept eating.  
  
Ian looked at this indication of unusual friendliness, smiled evilly, and hopped to his feet, gesturing for attention. “Ladies, gentlemen, and those of any other persuasion! Join me for a moment, would you?”  
  
All the eyes swiveled to him.  
  
“I’d just like to thank our guest chef for the evening,” Ian proclaimed, and Michael had a split-second moment of dread—what if Ian was drunk enough to announce James’s name to a pub full of people?—and readied all his muscles for a flying tackle if needed.  
  
“…he’s brilliant, and we should all be grateful for that,” Ian said, and then tilted a glass their direction. Surprisingly quietly, finished, “thank you, James, and you, Michael,” and then tossed back his drink, echoed by the rest of the pub, with scattered applause.  
  
Michael looked at James, who’d gone bone-pale under the treasure-dust freckles. Prepared himself to be support, to provide a distraction, to push James onto a chair in the unoccupied kitchen and then shout at Ian.  
  
But James surprised him. Stood up a bit more straight, and essayed a somewhat more confident wave. “Thank you? Although I’m not thanking you, Ian. I’m thinking up plans for revenge, for that.”  
  
This got a laugh, especially from Ian, and also Patrick. They were watching James with alert intentness.   
  
“Ah…not really much else to say, except, I think we’re out of blackberries, so, no more blackberry tarts…and I appreciate you all being here…except maybe Ian…” More laughs. James had the entire audience in love with him, spellbound and adoring. Michael stood there with his arm lingering protectively around those shorter shoulders because he couldn’t move, and was in awe.  
  
“Really,” James went on, “you should thank Michael, because without him I’d not be here, so, um, leave him good tips? And ask him to make Star Wars-themed cocktails, he’s extremely good at that.”  
  
“You did _not_ ,” Michael muttered, under his breath, “just do that to me,” and James threw him a wicked grin, all affectionate mischief. Michael found himself utterly breathless at the sight.  
  
“Give us a minute, though,” James said, and pulled him toward the kitchen door, “because he needs to help me with the potatoes,” and then waved again and all at once they were in the kitchen, pots and pans and oven-heat and gleaming walls.  
  
James exhaled, and practically collapsed against the closest of those walls, tipping his head back with a thunk. Michael winced, exhilaration ceding to apprehension. “Are you…that was…I mean, fuck, James, that was incredible. Are you all right?”  
  
“I think so.” The closed eyes and slumped posture argued otherwise; Michael leaned a shoulder beside him, cautious companionship. James opened the eyes to look. “All those author appearances do come in handy, after all. Practice…”  
  
“I’m sorry about Ian. I can mix his next cocktail with something truly vile if you ask me to.”  
  
“Tempting, but not necessary. I’m absolutely sure he thought he was helping. That it’d be good for me. He’s probably not wrong. Though…if you felt like putting salt in his piña colada, I wouldn’t complain.”  
  
“Noted. And diabolical. Dangerous, you are.”  
  
“I was going to say pepper, for the alliteration, but that’d be too visible.” The eyes sparkled up at him. Michael found himself smiling back too broadly, besotted. The oven chirped once, announcing the arrival of baked goods; there was a smudge of flour over James’s left cheek, and the whole world was vibrant and cozy, exactly where it wanted to be.  
  
James observed the oven with unmoving complacence. “I should get that.”  
  
“I can,” Michael said, and peeled himself off the wall and grabbed oven mitts. “Chocolate chip?”  
  
“I felt like something simple. And, I don’t know, you could make White Russians and call it cookies and milk or something. Or I just want you to make me a White Russian. I like kahlua.”  
  
“I can handle that. Anything else? Did you need your potatoes?” He took some pride in the fact that he was tall enough to reach the shelf without stretching far. He could bring James potatoes when potatoes were called for. And James had asked him for a drink. He could also bring James drinks. He could do things for James.  
  
He tried to surreptitiously determine whether those blue eyes were watching his arms. Couldn’t tell.  
  
“I’ll do jacket potatoes,” James said, “that’s easy. Last savory thing. When’re we done here, again?”  
  
“Oh…um, the pub closes at two. A couple more hours. But you don’t have to—I mean, you can stop whenever you want. This isn’t your job. And thank you. If I didn’t say so before.” He was standing right in front of James, so close that he could see each individual freckle decorating the bridge of that nose. His fingers ached with the need to reach out, to discover how they’d feel to the touch.   
  
He wondered whether James could hear the beating of his heart. It sounded loud enough for that, in his ears.  
  
“We said it was a date,” James said lightly, and fed him a chocolate chip. It melted on his tongue. “I could do it again…just for you…with you, sometime.”  
  
Michael swallowed, managed, “Yes please,” and tasted luscious dark chocolate on his lips, with the words.  
  
James finally emerged from the kitchen around one in the morning, running a hand through rumpled hair. Michael instantly erased every line on the sign and announced, “No more food,” and got some jovial grumbling, and another intoxicated cheer, as James settled onto a stool at the end of the bar.   
  
No one tried to come over and pat an arm or offer praise or buy him a drink. There were glances, and some murmurs, but no motion. Ian was sipping his drink with an air of unadulterated smugness, no doubt related.   
  
“I’ll make you whatever you want,” Michael told him, “anything, just ask,” and James lifted eyebrows at him. “Tempting offer. Come up with something for me; I’m too tired to think.”  
  
“Oh,” Michael said, and bit his lip. “I’m—sorry. Are you—”  
  
“I’m fine.” With a one-handed wave, slightly clumsy; Michael frowned, but James was going on. “Everything’s research, anyway, if you think of it like that. The next book can absolutely have a character who works in a kitchen. I did most of the dishes—”  
  
“We have dishwashers for that!” They did. Both machines and people.  
  
“Well, good, then, because I had to stop. I—what _are_ you putting in that?”  
  
“Um…it’s sort of a brandy alexander. Except I’m also adding kahlua. And eventually chocolate syrup. You said you liked those flavors.” And the nutmeg that’d decorate the top reminded him of all the freckles, but he didn’t say that part. “Here.”  
  
“… _oh_. You’re fantastic. Utterly, undeniably, genius.” James took another sip, made another pleased little sound that ought to be illegal in public. Michael instantly wanted to hear that sound forever, in bed, underneath him, legs wrapped around his.  
  
James set the glass down, too awkwardly, and the base rang against the bar. Michael went very cold, staring at his hand. “James—”  
  
“Oh.” James flushed, and started to take the hand away. “Wait,” Michael said, and dove for it, catching retreating fingers in his. “Please. What happened?”  
  
“Cut myself. It’s been a while since I did this for other people, and I was trying to be quick, and it was an excessively sharp knife. It’s fine, I found the first-aid kit, it’s not that bad.”  
  
“You’re hurt,” Michael said, running his fingers gingerly over that hand, not touching the bandage encircling that wounded index finger. “You got hurt. For me.” And he _was_ touching James, he realized all at once: James was allowing that from him. There were freckles on the back of the hand in his; they extended all the way up that arm, spiraling free and unrestrained.  
  
He stood there holding James’s hand, and was abruptly more turned on than he’d ever thought possible, just by the sight and feel of that skin against his. He was also horrified, because James was hurt, had been bleeding and hadn’t told anyone, not even him.  
  
“It’s not too bad.” James was looking at Michael’s fingers also. A bit pink-cheeked, but that might be exertion, not arousal. He wished it could be the latter, with every fiber of his body, his heart, his soul. But he couldn’t expect that. “I’m not—I’ll be all right. This was worth it.”  
  
“No, it wasn’t.” He’d said it instinctively, focused on that bandage. As James’s smile widened, he learned that it’d been the exact right reply.  
  
“It was. Tonight…all of this…I never knew I could do this. Thank you.”  
  
“…me?” No. No, because that wasn’t right. “You—all of this was you. Everything you did. I should be thanking you. Kevin should be thanking you. Bowing down to you. Don’t thank me.”  
  
“No, I need to, I…” James contemplated the nutmeg sprinkles atop his drink, and his own hand in Michael’s, and the ocean-waves danced with comprehending laughter. “I should say it. I’d’ve never done this without you. Can we…you’re done at two? Half an hour?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I can wait. I’d like to come home with you. We did it once before.”  
  
“We did,” Michael echoed, and rubbed his thumb over the back of James’s hand, memorizing tendon, bone, every last crease and line, for his heart to etch along its surface. “Did you eat anything? Or were you too busy taking care of the rest of us?”  
  
“Ah…some. Taste-tests. This is delicious as usual. Like Christmas, but drinkable.”  
  
“I love your metaphors.” Oh god. Too close.  
  
But James put his head on one side, weary, pleased, and used his free hand to take another sip. “I love your inventions. Is it raining?”  
  
Michael didn’t even bother glancing at the thickly-glazed pub windows. Wasn’t going to look away from James and the lingering glow of the words. “Could be.”   
  
“Hey,” said a voice from the other end of the bar, “last round, _please?_ ” and Michael grimaced. “I should…”  
  
“Go on.” James took his hand back and tucked it around his glass as if needing to hold something. “I’ve got a notebook. I can keep myself busy. And I like seeing you in your element.”  
  
“Twenty minutes,” Michael said, and reluctantly tore himself away to do his job, and not-so-reluctantly did a tiny bit of showing off, pouring inky-black vodka over the back of a spoon, letting it trail down and not mix with the orange juice in the customer’s screwdriver, leaving eerie October-themed layers in the glass. She applauded. James observed from his bar stool with delighted eyes, and then scribbled something in the notebook, and took a hefty sip of his drink.  
  
Patrick and Ian reappeared out of nowhere, glowing, clothing slightly askew. Michael resolutely did not think about the potential causes of this dishevelment as they said good night, as they waved at him. Ian very gingerly hugged James, hands patting his back. James returned the hug, though not for too long, and skillfully kept his bandaged finger out of sight.   
  
Michael made a mental note of that, both good and bad. James could be touched, at least more than before. James was far too adept at hiding his own injuries, too.

He announced last call, then five minutes, then closing. Shooed the final stumbling patrons out into the street. The sky’d not yet opened up, but was lowering and black as winter ice, and the air tasted of imminent wet.  
  
When he shut the door and turned around, James was watching.   
  
Watching, and lovely, hair curling into his face, elbows propped on the bar, more relaxed in public than Michael’d ever seen him. His cheeks were pink—alcohol? lingering kitchen-heat? the knowledge he’d been caught looking?—and those bright lips were parted and the top button of his shirt was open, and Michael’s brain shut off somewhere around the glimmer of freckles at his throat.  
  
“So,” James said, and actually stretched, arching his spine, unconsciously causing Michael’s heart to do somersaults, and Michael’s body to do other things, “your place?”  
  
“Um. Yes? James?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“I…nothing. Never mind. Ready?”  
  
James grabbed coat and scarf, freeing Michael to think and breathe and move again. “Ready. Do you need help locking up? Stacking chairs? Anything?”  
  
“No. You’ve singlehandedly rescued us once already. Did you drive here?” James certainly wasn’t going to be allowed to drive home. Not when plainly tired or tipsy enough to lounge on the bar like an invitation to sin. Not when forgetting the inhibitions Michael _knew_ were present.  
  
“Honestly?” James leaned closer to him, eyes all merry confession. “I walked. Left my car by your place. Across the street.”  
  
“You…what?”  
  
“Well,” James said, and blushed far too endearingly, and looked down. His words tasted like brandy and nutmeg and coffee liqueur. “I might’ve been…hoping I could at least walk home with you? And if you didn’t want me to stay, then it would still work, I could just go, but if you did, I thought you might, then that would be perfect?”  
  
This, Michael decided hazily, must be what getting hit on the head with a bar stool had to feel like. Since when was James the one trying, impressively deviously, to flirt with him?  
  
He must’ve said at least the last part out loud, because James’s blush turned into more embarrassment than hopefulness. “Oh, sorry, I—never mind, I’ll just—I should go, it’s about to start tempesting—”  
  
“I want you to stay!”  
  
“…you do?”  
  
“Oh god yes.” He held out a hand; James, after a lip-nibble, took it. “I want everything you’ve just said. But, James…” He put out the other hand, ran it over James’s cheek, cupped his chin. “I want you to want that, too. I want you to be sure. I don’t want you to do anything you’d not do sober, all right?”  
  
James lifted eyebrows, laughed, took a step closer, so that Michael’s hand slid up along his face, his jaw, the soft skin behind his ear. “You do realize I’ve just said I left my car there this afternoon. Before you made me any intoxicating beverages. I know I’ve been…not as good, the last few days. I—”  
  
“That doesn’t—”  
  
“I want to spend time with you.” That tempting hair twined like rough silk around his fingers. “So I tried to make sure I could. If I could tell myself that I’d get to walk home with you, I’d want to stay.”  
  
“Oh,” Michael breathed, comprehension slamming into his heart. “Oh. James. You’re amazing.”  
  
James shook his head, small crooked smile hovering in the shadows, but took another step forward. “Hold me for a minute?”  
  
“Of course,” Michael said, and folded both arms around him, awkward bundles of wool coats and scarves and heartbreaking joy amid scattered chairs and tables.  
  
He did venture, finally, “James?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Still awake?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“And you can walk, right?”  
  
“Yes, I can.” James was laughing, into his shoulder. “I’m not _that_ drunk. Not even off-balance.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“…maybe some. But I did eat. And I know you didn’t make it that strong, that last one; you take good care of me. Can we go home now? I might want to shower. I must smell like your kitchen.”  
  
“…shower,” Michael repeated, and then only didn’t kick himself because he was still holding James. Conversation, not instant fantasies. Right. “Yes? If you don’t mind that it’s tiny?”  
  
“ _I’m_ sort of tiny.”  
  
“I wasn’t going to say it, but yes to that too?”  
  
And James laughed again, unguarded and carefree in the night, and they outran the rain together, hand in hand.  
  
They made it through the door steps before the deluge, tumbling into each other onto Michael’s long-suffering sofa. It creaked approvingly. James used a spare hand to pet a squashable cushion.   
  
“I think it likes me.”  
  
“I _know_ it likes you.” Thunder boomed joyously overheard, loud and wild. Michael left his arms where they’d ended up, around James’s waist; James kicked off shoes. They hit the floor with twin solid thuds.  
  
“Michael,” James said, half in his lap, where they’d landed.   
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“I’m happy.”  
  
“Thank you,” Michael said, and James’s eyebrows went up. “For being happy?”  
  
“For letting me be here when you are.” He squeezed, not forcefully, but wanting James closer to him. “Also for liking my sofa. It’s never been more excited.”  
  
“Not yet,” James said speculatively, and then put weight on the wrong hand, sitting up. “Oh, fuck, ow.”  
  
Michael bit back expletives for multiple reasons. His body was practically craving more of James. Like a drug. And James was…  
  
…was shaking his hand, wincing, expression comically dismayed but with just a hint of relief lurking underneath. Too much, Michael thought, too fast. A reprieve, then.  
  
He sat up also. Disentangled their legs. “Want painkillers?”  
  
“No, it’s fine…” James took a breath, met his eyes; Michael gave him a little eyebrow shrug—it’s all right, we’re good, I want you, I won’t push—and James breathed out again: thank you. “I did sort of mean it about the shower. I wouldn’t mind feeling less like a pub kitchen.”  
  
“My shower is your shower,” Michael said, and got him a towel. Five minutes later, water already on, figured out that he should’ve found post-shower clean clothing as well. Sprinted for his bedroom, those fluffiest pyjama pants, his softest worn t-shirt, and even a pair of socks because he didn’t want James to have cold toes.  
  
The bathroom door was of course shut. Michael looked at it, had a hard-fought internal battle, and then set the clothing down on the floor just outside and deliberately went back out into the other room, where he had an intense staring contest with his sink, which thought it’d be a really marvelous idea to run back to the bathroom and open the door just wide enough to drop clothes in and possibly turn his head at the right angle at the right moment and peek.  
  
“No,” he said to the sink, firmly, and started making hot cocoa instead. James liked chocolate. And his treacherous hands needed to be in motion.  
  
The water flipped off, down the hall. Michael tried not to picture the following moments: James hopping out of the shower, shaking droplets from his hair, wet lines gleaming on his skin. James wrapped in Michael’s oversized towel. James naked under Michael’s oversized towel. James walking clad only in the towel across the bathroom, over to the door…  
  
Milk bubbled up and threatened to scald his hand. He jumped, and then glared. All right, he’d got the warning.  
  
A busy few minutes later, hot cocoa waited on the counter, complete with a touch of apple brandy and tarragon because he couldn’t resist. Still no James, though; and he contemplated running down there to check in, out of real concern this time. It’d been a long day for those sea-shadow eyes, in many ways. He knew it’d been.  
  
He bit his lip, traced a curl of steam up from the closest mug. His feet shuffled themselves sideways.  
  
And then he heard, “Michael?” and nearly fell over his own already-in-motion toes, trying to fly that direction.   
  
That luxurious Scottish accent hadn’t sounded afraid, though, or hurt; more curious and a touch frustrated, and so when Michael arrived, panting, at the bathroom door, he found a fully-clothed James studying his own hand over the sink.  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
“Mostly.” Their eyes met, in the mirror. “I’m…yes. I am. But this…” A wiggle of those fingers; red dripped along the freckles, splashed to white porcelain. “It opened up again. In the shower. I couldn’t find your first-aid kit.”  
  
“It’s in the kitchen,” Michael said, “don’t move,” and sprinted out to the other room and back, hand clamped around the plastic handle. “Can I see? You might need stitches. If—”  
  
“It’s not _that_ bad,” James protested, watching him dab sterile cloth over welling blood. “Is it? I’ve cut myself before; I heal fast.”  
  
“Um.” He was careful with the edges, wiping bright streaks away where they threatened to dye pale skin. It was a deep cut—James must’ve been serious about the sharp knife—and at an awkward angle, sideways along his index finger, over the first joint. It’d stretch and pull whenever the finger flexed. But it wasn’t terribly long, and it was clean, not ragged or cruel.  
  
“We can see how it goes tonight. Don’t use it if you can help it.”  
  
“I won’t,” James said, smiling, “I’ll get you to hand me everything,” and Michael knew he was teasing and said “yes” regardless, truthful and honored, cradling his hand.  
  
“That should hold. For tonight. We should check it in the morning.”  
  
“In the morning…” James gazed at him, amused. Michael opened his mouth, closed it. Started over. “I mean…if you were…if you wanted to…I’d like you to spend the night. You don’t have to.”  
  
Another smile, at that. Michael wondered, not for the first time, what had made the brilliant man standing beside him so hesitant, so quick to retreat from making contact. James wasn’t shy or diffident, had a generous heart and a wicked sense of humor, one that matched Michael’s own; James could and did laugh with him and mock him gently and stand in front of a cheering crowd and have them all eating—literally—out of his hand.  
  
“I want to,” James said, looking at the new bandage on said hand, at Michael’s long fingers resting over his. Michael’s pyjama pants were too long on him and pooled around his feet in cloth puddles, which should’ve made him seem younger; it did, but no less attractive. His hair stood up in unlikely spikes from the shower, fantastical and otherworldly.   
  
“I was honestly only thinking, it already is morning. Nearly three.”  
  
“Oh—” He was used to being nocturnal, but James no doubt wasn’t, at least to this extent. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”  
  
“No, I don’t mind. Writer, remember, I’m required to be awake in the crevices of night. Like cats, or vampires. Is that hot cocoa?”  
  
“Yes? I thought you might want it. Um. With brandy.”  
  
“You really do want me to stay. Alcohol, blood loss, I’ll probably fall asleep on your sofa two minutes from now…”  
  
“Oh, fuck, sorry—”  
  
“Just don’t—” James stopped, seemed to be rearranging his sentence. “I was teasing. Don’t worry. Though I am kind of a lightweight; one good drink and I’ll start telling you about the time I kissed David Gerrold in the middle of a science-fiction convention.”  
  
“…who?”  
  
“Inventor of tribbles? Star Trek? No? I’m going to have to educate you, then.”  
  
“Do I get to hear this story about the kissing?” He very much wanted to hear this story. And his heart thumped in irrationally jealous displeasure. He’d no idea who this David Gerrold was, but clearly James did, and that gave the man an unfair advantage. Thump, again.  
  
“If you want. You did promise hot cocoa…”  
  
“I did.” He kept hold of that hand all the way to the kitchen and over to the worn sofa; when they settled in, James curled the uninjured fingers of the other hand around his mug and pulled up his legs and stuck his toes beneath Michael’s thigh, casual and fond. Michael forgot how to inhale, as the happiness scampered through his veins.  
  
“Are your feet cold?”  
  
“You’re keeping me warm.” James took a sip, looked up with delight written all over his face. “This is _magical_.”  
  
“Glad you approve. Star Trek?”  
  
James grinned, swallowed, licked lips, chasing traces of spice and cocoa and apple brandy. Michael swallowed, too. Waited.  
  
“If I tell you this one, you owe me one, next.” The rain drummed away above, sealing them in. A world of their own. The faded sofa and fuzzy pyjama pants and the scent of apples.  
  
“Fair enough.” He took a gulp out of his own mug, and thought: James would taste like this, right now. If I kissed him. If he wanted me to. “You first.”  
  
Another lethal smile-and-lip-lick combination, as if James knew what he was thinking and wanted to play with him. Michael couldn’t object. He didn’t mind being played with by James.   
  
“All right, then. So it was just after _First Class_ came out—the first novel, I mean, when it started hitting bestseller lists—and I got invited to all these conventions, and I’d been a fan but I’d never been famous before, I’d never even gone to one convention because I couldn’t—and I found myself on an evening panel about, ah, sexuality in science fiction. And I was terrified, and so beforehand I went down to the bar, and I thought, okay, I can have a drink, I can get through this, but then people started buying me an excessive lot of drinks, and I sort of forgot to eat anything…”  
  
Michael winced. The rain played sympathetic music on the windowpane.  
  
James laughed ruefully into his cocoa. “It was funny, actually, because of course David _is_ out and proud of it, and someone asked him a question about setting an example, being so visible, and he looked at me and picked up the microphone and said, want to be visible with me, and everyone laughed, and the next fan question was directed at me, and she said she’d had a different question but now she really just wanted to know if I’d kiss David for her. So I did.”  
  
“…good god,” Michael said, and tried not to laugh and, equally, want to find the person who’d been kissed in public by James—by _his_ James, who these days offered even smiles like infrequent gold, buried deep beneath rock and glinting out from secret seams.   
  
“It’s probably on the internet somewhere. People had, y’know, cameras.” James started to wave the hand with the cocoa in it; paused as if surprised to find it interrupting his gesture, and took another sip. Michael tried to recall how strong he’d made them. Not that strong, he thought; but James hadn’t been wrong about the exhaustion, the blood loss, and his own low tolerance, evidently. He might need to apologize.  
  
His brain, jumping back to an earlier word, kicked him and inquired: terrified? James, from all available evidence, wasn’t easily frightened. But James had said _couldn’t_ , about going to conventions, even as a fan.  
  
“So,” James said, “that’s that story. That was before I—well, anyway, it was fun, and David was very nice about it, and told me I was quite good at kissing but too young to be his type, and both our books sold out at the display table, the next day. And I had the worst hangover in the universe. How much alcohol _did_ you put in this? And I think it’s your turn.”  
  
“Before you what?”  
  
“What? Oh…no, not fair. Didn’t you ever read fairy-tales? Keep your side of the bargain.”  
  
“James,” Michael said, laughing, leaning forward, plucking the mostly-empty mug out of unprotesting hands, “are you saying you’re a fairy creature, then? Am I making magical bargains with you?”  
  
“Possibly.” James regarded him with wide blue eyes, dark and uncanny. The rain shivered and rustled, silvery susurration. “Perhaps I’ve come here just for that. To enchant you. While dressed in your pyjama pants. Would you mind, if I had?”  
  
“No.” He was still holding both of those hands; James hadn’t taken this chance away. “What do you want to know? It’d be a memory, wouldn’t it, if we’re doing fairy-tales…a childhood day, the secret recipe for a perfect cocktail, something I’d wish for if I had the chance?”  
  
“Tempting, that last one…what you would wish for…but no.” James gazed at him, eyes all depthless blue, fractionally too huge and glittering to be sober. Intoxicating; ensorcelling. “Tell me something about you. Something…you’d want me to know.”  
  
Michael looked at those eyes. Then at the hands gathered into his. Shorter, broader, freckled; the new bandage glinted white, a blatant slash through cinnamon-and-nutmeg galaxies. He ran a thumb over the back of the left one, gathered the words he wanted to give in return. His part of the bargain.   
  
“His name was—is—Steve. Why I’m here.”  
  
James made a sudden infinitesimal movement, hands tensing in his; but when Michael paused inquiringly, he shook his head: go on, listening…  
  
“It’s not…it wasn’t anything painful, or, well, it sort of was, but not—not sort of abusive, or…” Some part of his brain was preoccupied, wondering what lay behind that unconscious jolt. “It was…you know I was an actor, right? Or trying to be?”  
  
James nodded, eyes solemn as if being entrusted with the secret of the universe.  
  
“Right, well…he was my director. On that first film, the first real film I ever…it was fantastic, you know. The script, the shooting, everything. And he and I…” He searched for words, for a minute. “You know how you can meet someone, and just feel like you know them, like you’re completely in tune…”  
  
Another nod; a quick lip-lick, but the eyes never left his face.  
  
“It was like that. Or. It was for me. The film got a great critical reception—or so I’ve heard, I’ve not been keeping up lately—but it didn’t make money, and it wasn’t widely distributed, and…that’s all less important. What’s important…” He ran his thumb over James’s hand again. Studied that bandage, the hurt James’d accepted in doing him a favor, offering aid.  
  
“I told him I loved him,” he said finally. “And he told me that he…loved my talent, my acting, my passion for the job. But he didn’t love me. Not like that. He was sorry. I’m not sure it helped.”  
  
James turned those hands, in his. Laced their fingers together. “So you came here.”  
  
“So I got terrifically, unbelievably drunk, and I walked out, and when I woke up in the morning I didn’t know what I had left to hope for, and I got on the bike and took the first turns I came to and ended up here, yes. Because I had the mother of every hangover ever and I’d never heard of this place and that sounded perfect. And Kevin needed a bartender.”  
  
James nodded one more time. “Do you still love him?”  
  
Michael took a deep breath. Let it go, gradually. Found himself surprised when the words came out, unplanned and unchecked. “I think…I don’t think you ever stop caring about someone. Not completely. And he believed in me, when no one else would. Gave me a chance. I do love him for that. But I’m not sure that’s the same. I can picture him with someone else. I can picture me with someone else. And it feels…not bad.”  
  
There was a flash of emotion in all the blue, a dart of hope or wistfulness or want; it submerged itself too quickly for Michael to be sure, neat and practiced at hiding away.  
  
“Would you ever go back? Not to him, I mean, to London. Or Hollywood, or somewhere.”  
  
“I don’t know.” The question had been meant sincerely; he gave it equal consideration. “I miss acting. I mean, I love it—getting under the skin of different characters, telling stories, thinking about why and how people become who they are. It’s like…mythology, sort of.” James, who understood good narrative, might also understand this; he thought that might be the case, from the recognition in those eyes.  
  
“But it’s not even a question, right now. Not like anyone’s beating down the door to hire me. And I kind of like it here.” Greatly daring, he tapped his fingers over those hands in his: I like _you_.  
  
“I can see you as an actor,” James said musingly, “you’re good with people, with stories. You’re good with me,” and then, as Michael opened his mouth—you’re worth being good to, he’d meant to say—James leaned forward, very quickly, and kissed him.  
  
It was a swift kiss, a moth-wing flutter of lips against lips, skin to skin. But it sent crackles of pure white light along Michael’s spine. Down to his toes. Through fingertips, where they were touching.  
  
Amazed, he licked his lips in the aftermath. Wondered whether they looked any different, with the imprint of James’s mouth seared forever there.  
  
James blushed vivid pink over all the freckles, and didn’t take his hands away.  
  
“James,” Michael said, slowly because he was still caught up in the champagne-bubble of elation and trying to believe it was real, “you…you _did_ just…”  
  
“I wanted to.” Thunder boomed once, low and heavy. Punctuation for the moment, and they didn’t flinch from it. “I thought—if you wanted—but if you don’t I can—”  
  
“Can I kiss you again?”  
  
“Yes—”  
  
“Oh thank god,” Michael said, and leaned in, and consumed the yes on those lips, cocoa-sweetness and apple-tartness and fire, the heat of James’s mouth welcoming his.   
  
James smelled like Michael’s soap, Michael’s shampoo, clinging to his skin; Michael wound hands through all that shower-damp hair and pulled him closer, fierce tenderness washing through his body, his heart. James didn’t protest the surge of possessiveness. Only parted those lips further and let himself be tasted, devoured, explored.  
  
The rain sang away around them, steady and true. Michael bit down lightly on that inviting lower lip, and heard James gasp. He murmured, “Too hard?” into the kiss, and James whispered back, “No,” and looped a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him back down.  
  
They discovered each other incrementally, cautiously, blissfully, lying across Michael’s gleeful couch cushions. Virgin territories, unhurried drawn-out cartographies, the contours of hips, shoulders, thighs. He didn’t try to remove James’s clothing, kept hands gentle and leisurely, though hardly innocent. James, in turn, kissed his fingers, his wrist, and traced a line along Michael’s forearm with his tongue, and Michael made a noise he’d never known he could make, because he’d also never known anything half so erotic.  
  
He felt the resultant smile against his skin. In his heart. In his bones. “Come here,” he breathed, “you’re so fucking beautiful, James,” and left kisses on lips, throat, collarbone when James sighed and tipped his head back, baring skin.   
  
They explored each other for hours, unnoticing, lost in sensation and the serene gladness of the storm. Michael kept reminding himself to slow down, to breathe, to ask how James was feeling. James smiled into his eyes, and whispered back each time, “we’re good,” and, once, laughing, “ _extremely_ good.” Michael felt immensely proud, and found that particular spot again with his tongue.  
  
The morning bloomed into grey-pearl light, opalescent with rain. Michael nibbled at James’s left ear, and then, completely by accident, caught sight of the time. “Um. James?”  
  
“Mmm…I wasn’t done with you. Come back?” One leg fit itself more securely between his. “Or—” Apprehension, all at once, in that formerly desire-rich accent. In James’s body against his.  
  
“Or are we—was that not—I’m sorry, I know you must want—more—I can try but—”  
  
“James! No. _No_. Look at me, come on, please.” He ran a finger over kiss-bruised lips, hoping. Watched eyelashes quiver. “I’m not asking for more. I’m not—this is fantastic. You’re fantastic. Everything I could want.”  
  
“Please say you’re not only saying that to make me feel better.” Even the voice sounded forlorn. Lonely wind over Highland hills.   
  
“I’m not only saying it to make you feel better.” He lifted James’s hands, kissed them, one after the other. Each finger. All of them in turn. “I mean it. I’d never ask you to make yourself try, if you can’t. And this was—this _is_ —so fucking good. Um. Sorry. Very good. James, you have no idea.”  
  
“You do mean that?” A bit less lonely, this time. “Yes,” he said, and kissed the freckles on the bridge of that nose. James went cross-eyed trying to watch him; refocused.   
  
“You’re sure.”  
  
“I only stopped because it’s six in the morning and neither of us has slept and I got you a little bit drunk and I don’t want you to have a hangover and hate me. Otherwise I’d be kissing you now.”  
  
“I wouldn’t hate you.” James lifted eyes to find his; the rain cheered, seeing the expression in the blue. “And I like kissing you. Though…now that you’ve mentioned it…kind of thirsty?”  
  
“Thought so,” Michael said, and went off to get water, half regretful at the momentary loss of James’s touch and half wishing he’d had the thought sooner. “Better?”  
  
“Yes. Thank you.”  
  
“If you need it, I have aspirin somewhere.”  
  
“No, this helps…” James tried to take a sip through a yawn. Failed miserably. Michael found this unfairly adorable.  
  
“You,” he said, “bed. Come on.”  
  
James set down the water glass somewhat warily, and bit at his lip, the gesture that Michael was coming to recognize: pensiveness, desire, wanting to say yes but unsure if he should. “I can’t keep taking your bed.”  
  
“I don’t mind. I like the couch. Even more now.”  
  
“If I had an idea,” James said, and Michael held his breath, because he had all sorts of ideas, but surely James wasn’t thinking any of those.   
  
“I think we can…you can…if you want me to sleep here, we can share your bed. Otherwise I’ll feel too guilty. All right?”  
  
Michael, who’d had innumerable daydreams involving precisely that since the day they’d met, said, “…yes?” and resolutely ordered his body to remember that those _were_ only daydreams and that James didn’t like being touched and that James was suggesting bed-sharing for practical purposes and not out of some secret desire to seduce him in the night.  
  
“Yes,” James said, and let Michael pull him up out of the couch’s grip, and fit their steps and bodies together as they headed to the bedroom.  
  
He tucked James into bed, water within arm’s reach. James yawned again, pillowed a cheek on one hand, catlike and content. Michael’s heart performed more complex gynmastics under his breastbone. He was both getting used to that feeling and not, every time he caught sight of James. Thrills down his spine, all over again, every time.  
  
“Ah…” He generally slept shirtless—in fact, he often slept naked, but it’d been cold lately—but he did have shirts to spare. He was now facing the conundrum: leave to change, or see if he could get James to trust him just a little bit more.  
  
“Do you…want me to change in the other room? Or…”  
  
“Seriously? It’s your bedroom.” James burrowed under the blankets. Only blue eyes and improbable hair—and a bit of pinkened skin at his throat, burn from Michael’s end-of-day scruff, the sight of which made Michael’s mouth go dry—showed. “You can stay. Put on a show for me.”  
  
“Oh,” Michael said, “really,” and therefore took his time stripping, shirtless and down to boxers before he reached for pyjama pants. He wasn’t imagining the way those eyes roamed over him with approval. He could tell.  
  
He did keep exactly the same amount of distance between them, himself at the foot of the bed, no sudden movements toward the blanket-ball of person and pillows. He thought maybe James appreciated that.  
  
“You’re wonderful,” James said, proving him right. “In so many ways.”  
  
“And all yours.” He meant it. Getting into bed, careful to maintain that space and let James decide how close to come, he meant it.   
  
The night was perfect. The drumming of the rain was perfect. And James was completely, amazingly, inarguably perfect. Beautiful and brilliant and courageous and fascinating, and Michael knew in that instant that he’d forever go on being fascinated.  
  
He could picture himself with someone else, in the wake of the Steve debacle; he’d admitted as much earlier. He couldn’t picture himself with _any_ someone else, though. He only saw James.  
  
Who turned over, facing him. Reached out a hand, which Michael took; stretched over a foot, and let Michael play with his toes.  
  
“Night,” Michael said, very softly, because he had to say something, and he thought he might be saying _I love you_.  
  
“Night,” James said, and fell asleep holding his hand.  
  
In the cool rain-drenched beginnings of the afternoon, he woke to find James nestled against him, touching everywhere, as if having sought his warmth in dreams. James was still thoroughly asleep; Michael lay there paralyzed by delight and shock and indecision, and in his moment of paralyzed floundering, blue eyes stirred and opened, finding his.  
  
He heard the abrupt inhale. Saw all the blue implode with black alarm.   
  
He sat up too hastily, and fumbled, “Good morning, sorry, I, um, didn’t think I’d moved but—I must’ve, sort of, I didn’t mean to, I—can I make you coffee? With actual creamer this time?”   
  
And the alarm dwindled into remorse and wistful agreement, surfacing through the waves.  
  
He knew he hadn’t stirred. He’d always been a sound sleeper. Tended to find one good position and stay put. He wondered whether James, being a fairy-creature, could read his mind, consequently knowing as much as well.  
  
James pushed himself up on an elbow. “Good morning, and yes you can, but I might want you to do something else first.”  
  
“Anything. What?”  
  
Freckled fingertips reached for him, tugging him back down into the bed, and James asked, voice gloriously certain in the chill of the air, “Kiss me again?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is an incident, James needs Michael, and Michael's there. Also, finally, very loving first-time sex in Michael's bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: for James having a panic attack after being uninvitedly touched, and for Michael getting that phone call and caring for him. Also, in case we need the warning for sex: this is the chapter where we earn the rating...

Two weeks of cautious tiptoeing courtship later, James didn’t show up at the pub on time.  
  
Michael, casually drawing a pint for Nicholas before Nick headed out, foam burbling up happily over the glass, caught himself glancing at that empty barstool, unoccupied doorway, lonely space in the air. His hand tightened around the pint before he slid it over. Nick gazed at him with concern.  
  
“It’s fine,” Michael said, and waved a hand, brushing the worry aside; went and made sticky florescent cocktail creations for Patrick and Ian at the other end of the bar, while the anxiety came back and gnawed on his bones. It wasn’t fine. James wasn’t there.  
  
They’d been good, he’d thought; they’d been moving together, gradual but inexorable, the tide under a moon. James’s laugh, all Scottish tartan shot through with rich threads of gold. His own arm holding up that giant umbrella as they ran through puddles to his doorway. Bookshop dates and a blush when Michael’d held up a copy of the collected First Class novels and declared, “found you!”  
  
They’d had a lengthy discussion, under the contented patter of the rain on the roof of the stolid pub and later of Michael’s tiny flat, about Professor X and Magneto and romantic tragedy versus tragic romance. Talking to James about literature was like talking to wildfire, Michael’d discovered: full of exuberance and insight and contagious passion, igniting heat across sentences with effortless flint and spark. He’d done his best to keep up. He thought that he’d been doing all right; at the very least, James had smiled at him.  
  
He’d asked James to stay over after that one. He’d been trying to remember to ask; James needed that, he was understanding. Needed the encouragement, the sense that, yes, Michael did want him there.  
  
He’d nearly asked James to stay forever. Astonished, had stopped and wondered at himself. Forever. With James.  
  
They _were_ good. He knew they were. He hoped that James knew it too, found it in shared bedspace and spontaneous kisses, hands in pockets and laced together. Beginnings and continuings and coffee with cream, pumpkin-spice and vanilla and crème brulee. Pub nights and increasingly elaborate alcoholic concoctions, including a nearly perfect Tornado that made James applaud and then demand a second one just so he could take future-story notes on the swirl-pattern of the funnel: vodka, rum, whiskey, tequila, sugar and Coca-Cola and ice debris.  
  
Michael’d made the second one as requested, and then ensured that James didn’t drink more than half of it by taking sips from the glass himself. James looked at him with wide-eyed and unfairly endearing tipsiness—it was a four-shot drink, which Michael’d only thought of _after_ showing off—and put his lips in the exact place Michael’s own had just been.  
  
They went home to his place together, most mornings. Not every morning; some nights became overwhelming, too many demands, too much emotion. But more often than not.  
  
He’d never asked about coming to James’s home. Had considered the question, fleetingly, and then set it aside. Someday James might feel secure enough to open that refuge to him. Until then, he could wait.  
  
They woke up together, tangled into each other. They had breakfast together.  
  
James tended to leave after that, to live for a few hours in his own sanctuary, words and stories and imagination, replenished reserves of quietude. Fortifications for the evenings, for hectic pub nights. But he did come, every time, willing to lean on Michael’s strength and his own and let himself be talked to and complimented in public.  
  
And Michael was finding that he wanted it all: James there when he went to sleep, James there when he awakened, James in his kitchen conjuring French toast out of sunbeams and battered pans and eggs and bread, wearing Michael’s pyjama pants and a crooked smile. He wanted that for _all_ his days.  
  
And today James wasn’t there. Hadn’t come through the door and given him that little wave, exactly at four pm, right on time.  
  
Five minutes after four.  
  
Fifteen minutes after four.  
  
Twenty.  
  
A busload of lost tourists descended like flies. Every last one of them seemed to be starving, and they cooed with admiration over the “real British pub.” Michael gritted his teeth and poured them drinks and tried not to demand that they leave him alone.  
  
Thirty-five minutes, and the tourists wanted him to be in pictures. The bus driver rolled his eyes, glanced at Michael’s expression, finished getting directions from Ian, and yelled, “Back on, five minutes, we’re late!” and made a face that was doubtless meant to imply sympathy along with a sort of ‘what can you do?’ world-weary camaraderie.  
  
His fingers tapped themselves on the bar. He stopped them. Forcibly. Watched the bus pull away.  
  
His skin itched. Something had to be wrong, must be, he knew there was. He couldn’t stand still.  
  
Patrick and Ian and Nicholas appeared to think so too. Nick hadn’t even left, loitering in the corner with the other two and shoving his pint glass around and throwing worried looks at Michael.  
  
He checked his mobile. No missed calls. No texts.  
  
He pretended he had to get a bottle off the top shelf, so no one could see his face. Took several deep breaths while turned around.  
  
Checked his mobile again. Nothing. The newly acquired bottle sat placidly on the bar, gold flecks at the bottom. James would’ve been fascinated. Would’ve taken sips and laughed at the taste of gilded fire.  
  
James wasn’t _there_.  
  
Michael let his fingers hover over the button. Speed-dial. He could call. He could—  
  
Patrick and Ian were watching him anxiously. The rest of the pub was too quiet, hushed. As if it knew.  
  
He had his finger touching the button when the phone went off, vibrating like mad in his hand.  
  
He all but dropped it. Clung to the plastic case, frantic. “James?”  
  
“I…” That voice was spectacular as ever, luscious as brandy and cream, instantly recognizable; but it was shaking now, too, crumbling apart. “Michael, can you…I’m sorry, I didn’t know who else to call and I—I might need…I don’t know if you can come, if you’d want to, I just…”  
  
“James,” he managed, while his fingertips turned white from the force of his grip on the phone, “what happened, where are you, are you all right—”  
  
“I’m not—” A pause for breath, cracking and uneven, as if James couldn’t quite find air. “I’m at the bookshop. In the men’s room. Um. On the floor. I can’t—I’m sorry, I wanted to come meet you, but I don’t think I can stand up…”  
  
“Christ,” Michael said, and put a hand over his mouth, and then moved it so that he could talk. Patrick and Ian were already coming over. “James, yes, I mean no don’t apologize, yes I’m coming, I’m on the way, what _happened?_ ”  
  
“I can’t,” James said again, and then stopped talking, and Michael heard tiny broken sounds over the connection, the noises of someone trying not to cry. His heart slammed against his breastbone. The entire world had dwindled to nothing, just himself and his clumsy ice-block fingers and James sobbing on the telephone.  
  
“James,” he promised, “I’ll be right there, I’m leaving now, I’m on the way, keep talking to me,” and fought to keep his voice steady. The bookshop was so close, and James enjoyed its charms with vast and endless glee; what could’ve made the world fall out from under them like this?  
  
Nick met his eyes and said “I’ll stay and take your shift,” and Michael realized that he’d been about to run out of the pub without a second thought; he managed a nod of thanks, as Patrick gripped his shoulder.  
  
“Michael,” Ian said from the other side, “we don’t know much about it, but you should know this, before you see him. We meant to tell you.”  
  
“What—”  
  
“We weren’t sure whether James would.” Patrick patted him on the shoulder again. “We didn’t want to interfere, but this sounds…”  
  
“James,” Michael said into the phone, because the other end had been silent too long. “James?”  
  
“Still here. I think there might be people outside. I’d apologize, if I could, y’know, breathe.” Michael bit his lip. Could picture the half-shrug at that sentence, tartan-hillside voice clutching at self-deprecation like a lifeline.  
  
“You can’t breathe? Should you—”  
  
“No, sorry, I mean I can, I just…okay, never mind, I know the theory…might be having some problems with the…practical application…”  
  
“James—! Put your head down—between your knees—can you do that? Do you have—can you find something to breathe into?” His own knees were threatening to give out. Patrick and Ian were holding him up. “Still with me?”  
  
“…yes…and no…not much in the men’s room really…I think I’m going to pass out…”  
  
 _“Don’t you fucking dare!”_ Michael shouted at the phone, and ran. Ian and Patrick followed, though he didn’t look back to see if they were keeping up. “James, listen, just breathe, okay? Listen to my voice. In. And out. You can do that. One breath at a time. Come on…”  
  
He was having trouble breathing himself, sprinting along the pavement. The sky hung like rock above him, and the air snagged in his lungs. “James? You can hear me, right? One more. In. Out. Please.”  
  
“Trying…” James sounded slightly better, weaker but more clear. “You’re very…good at this…sorry…I didn’t mean to bother you…”  
  
“What the _fuck_ ,” Michael panted, and flung himself through the low-cut door and into the bookshop. Bolted for the knot of bodies at the back of the store. “Okay, I’m here, can you hear me? Say you can!”  
  
“I can hear you.” In person, though from the other side of the gnarled wooden door. Michael all but dropped the phone in relief. He put a hand on the knob; locked. He put his other hand on the wood, as if he could touch James through it.  
  
“What happened?”  
  
It wasn’t James who answered, but the teenage girl with the employee name tag, her eyes tragic and her hair twisted nervously around one finger. “He, um, there were these girls, I guess like fangirls, he was sort of over looking at the new science fiction and they were giggling and looking at him and then they sort of like jumped out at him and he looked, like, sort of scared for a sec, but he totally signed books for them anyway, so I wasn’t really looking but then I heard a sound and then he asked for the men’s room key because we like keep them behind the counters so people don’t—” She gulped, at the look on Michael’s face.  
  
“Anyway he was all polite when he asked but he was sort of like shaking, and like his hands were all cold, and then he went back there and didn’t come out and I didn’t know what to do and I don’t want to get fired—”  
  
“We’re sorry,” said a different girl, interrupting. This one was blonde and frightened, as if Michael might actually dismember her on the spot. “We’re so sorry, Rose dared me to do it, she said she’d do it, she kept texting me, and like he’s _James McAvoy_ , right, and I didn’t think we’d hurt him, I’m so sorry. Um. Is he okay?”  
  
“What. The fuck. Did you do.”  
  
Patrick, who’d caught up and who’d been having a muted conversation with her frizzy-haired friend, looked over and said, “They dared each other to grab his backside. Because evidently James McAvoy’s backside is a subject of great speculation among his fanbase. They’re extremely sorry.”  
  
“We _so_ are.”  
  
“Totally.”  
  
“You…what?” He looked at the closed door. “James?”  
  
“I’m sorry.” James sounded miserable. “I…it’s…I’m sorry.”  
  
“Michael,” Ian said urgently, “this is what we needed to tell you. You know James stayed with us, the first three nights he got here, a few months before you did.”  
  
“He did?”  
  
“Oh…well, he did. And he had—James, forgive me—he had nightmares.” Ian’s eyes were very compassionate. Full of shared sorrow. “He woke up sobbing. Once or twice he said words, in his sleep. Words like…don’t. Or no. And someone’s name. A man. We—Patrick tried to hug him once, you know, just to be there. That was…not the best thing to do.”  
  
Michael felt his lips shape the _oh_ , but no sound came out. He felt as if he’d been kicked. In the stomach. The heart.  
  
He’d known, of course he’d known. Not the details. But he’d known regardless.  
  
He’d been hoping, he knew—now that the hope was being stripped away—that James was feeling safer. Freer. Healed, or healing, bit by bit, from the hurt.  
  
Now the hurt was back to laugh at them in full and terrible force. And James was hiding away behind a fearful door. The wood provided only scratches and scuffs for input, no language he could read.  
  
James, unexpectedly, offered from the other side of that door, “That wasn’t your fault. That was—I know you were trying to help. I can’t remember whether I thanked you.”  
  
“You did,” Patrick said. “You did.”  
  
“James,” Michael whispered, “can you let me in? Only me, I promise, no one else, and I won’t even touch you, not if you don’t want that. But I would—I’d like to be there. You called me, and I’m here, so can I come in?”  
  
There was a pause, and then, “Give me a minute…”  
  
Michael told him, “That’s fine,” and pressed his palm flat against the rough peeling wood. The bookshop air tasted like dry paper and grief on his tongue. Outside, the clouds rumbled and muttered, but no rain fell.  
  
“That’s fine,” he promised again, “as long as you need,” and James made a sound that might’ve been half a laugh. “No, it’s just…this lock sort of sticks, and I don’t really have good leverage from here, and I’m trying to figure out whether I can stand up…hang on.”  
  
A thump, a rattle of metal, a grumble; Michael gulped in a breath, and the flavor of the oncoming storm burned cold on his tongue.  
  
“…okay. You can. Um, I’m back on the floor, don’t open it too far. There’s not a lot of room.”  
  
“Thank you,” Michael breathed, and twisted the knob, and opened the door just enough, and slid inside.  
  
James had been correct; there wasn’t much room. Standard dingy Edwardian toilet. Miniscule cloudy window. A sink, cracked porcelain everywhere, dirt heaped in the corners, and the sound of uneven breathing, inhales and exhales catching and tearing themselves to pieces along the way.  
  
But James _was_ breathing, huddled against the wall and hugging knees to his chest and pale but summoning a ghost of smile. “Hey.”  
  
“Hey, yourself.” He knelt down on the uncushioned linoleum, close but not touching, given the invitation. Held that gaze with his. “Are you feeling better? You seem like you can breathe, now…”  
  
James nodded, shut his eyes for a second, reopened them. “It’s a little better. You, on the phone…it helped, listening to your voice. I knew you were on the way. I’m sorry about this.”  
  
There were so many replies he could’ve made, then. He took a deep breath, shoved the first and second emotional responses down. “Don’t apologize. Just tell me what you need. What I can do to help.”  
  
“Just stay here…” James sighed, stared down at his arms, where they were wrapped around his knees. “Will you be in trouble? For leaving?”  
  
“No,” Michael said, “Nicholas’ll cover it, I’ll just owe him a morning sometime. Kevin doesn’t care.” Kevin, in fact, was as intensely curious about James and about Michael’s relationship with James as the rest of the village, and would probably cheer him on.  
  
He hadn’t shut the door properly; it started to swing open, and he nudged it back surreptitiously with a foot. “Can I get you anything? Or make them get you anything? Water, a blanket, a Tolkien paperback?”  
  
This had the desired effect; James let out a faint breath of laughter. “I don’t know…I don’t think so…I can’t see anyone yet.”  
  
“You don’t have to. We can stay right here as long as you want.” He contemplated this possibility and added, “We might have to get food delivered at some point. You can hide behind the door, if you feel like it.”  
  
James gazed at him, expression undecipherable.  
  
“Or I can tell Ian to go buy us food and leave it outside where I can reach it. He’d be thrilled to help.”  
  
“Michael,” James said. “You—” and then unfolded a fraction from his crumpled ball and said, “Hold on to me?”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“Yes. Not too tight. But I need to—I want to feel you. Here. Real.”  
  
“I am.” He opened arms. James all but fell into them. Michael, mindful of the not-too-tight plea, held him close, but lightly. Not confining. No pressure.  
  
James hadn’t been trembling when he’d come in, but was now, as if being held might allow him to come apart and feel safe in the disintegration. The breaths were trembling as well, but they never quite transformed into sobs. Michael tried rubbing his back, gradual unobtrusive circles, finding a rhythm; James didn’t object, so he continued.  
  
“I could sing to you,” he said to the head tucked under his chin, resting on his chest, wood-silk hair feathering along the corner of his mouth. “My mother used to sing to me whenever I got sick, growing up. I’d be all pathetic in bed, and she’d sit there for hours, singing Celtic lullabies…she’d bring me grape juice, when I was thirsty. Which to this day makes me feel nine years old again, so please don’t tell me you’ve got a secret passion for it.”  
  
He wasn’t expecting a reply, but James surprised him.  
  
Of course James did. James constantly surprised him. In magnificent—when not terror-inducing—ways.  
  
“I…wish I’d seen you at nine years old…must’ve been adorable…of course, I’d’ve only been seven…are you trying to distract me?”  
  
“Yes. I’d’ve liked you even then. More so if you wanted to do anything Star Wars with me. My mother has a picture of me in a Han Solo costume that she uses for emotional blackmail.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Probably shouldn’t’ve told you that, should I?”  
  
“I could…I’d like to see that. Someday.” James was breathing more easily, he thought, hoped, prayed. Might be his imagination.  
  
“She’d be overjoyed to show you.” He’d be overjoyed as well. Because that would mean that James was all right. And it would mean that James could meet his mother, and _wanted_ to meet his mother. “What about you, though? Do I get any mortifying childhood stories in return?”  
  
“I…might speak Klingon. I’ve always wanted a bat’leth…thank you.”  
  
“Say it in Klingon, or you don’t get to.” He wasn’t one hundred percent certain what a bat’leth was, but he could likely find out, and also find one, via the internet. “James? Still here?”  
  
“Still here.” James shivered once more, then relaxed against him all at once, tension evaporating, muscles giving up and giving in to relief. Didn’t say anything else.  
  
“Hey,” Michael said, and ran a hand through his hair, tapped fingers over his cheek. “Talk to me.”  
  
“I’m all right, I’m only tired, I just…” A single hand-wave, circumscribed by exhaustion, by shakiness. “Aftermath.”  
  
“Is that good?”  
  
“I think so. I’m not sure I can move, but I’m not…” One more gesture of expressive fingers, folded in and flicked outwards: exploding, erupting, crumpling. But James had said: _not_. “I can breathe again.”  
  
“Good,” Michael whispered, as the reaction spread through his own bones and dissipated. He found himself inexplicably on the verge of tears; pushed them down, where they formed a hot lump in his chest. “Good. No hurry, okay, I’m not asking about right now, but at some point, can I take you home? Or—anywhere that might help?” A hospital. An emergency room. People with training.  
  
Strangers. He couldn’t ask James to face that.  
  
“Home…” James sighed, and hid his face more deeply in Michael’s chest. “Maybe your place. Closer.”  
  
“…really?”  
  
“I like your bed?”  
  
“My bed adores you. Sit up for a second? If you can.”  
  
“Oh, sure, I can manage two seconds, even…was I crushing your leg? Sorry—”  
  
“Not at all crushed. See?” He tucked James back into place, and hoped those blue eyes hadn’t overheard his knee pop. “Comfortable?”  
  
“Um. Starting to remember that we’re sitting on the floor. An impressively dirty floor. Those dust bunnies have eyes. They’re watching us.”  
  
“As long as they’re friendly dust bunnies, I don’t mind.” James fit precisely into the circle of his arms; he could’ve linked his hands together and formed a ring, a defensive barrier, unbroken protection. He didn’t, in case that might feel like being trapped.  
  
He did touch his lips very softly to the top of James’s forehead, right at the edge of all the leaping dark strands of hair. James made a quiet sound, and one arm came over and wrapped itself around Michael’s waist.  
  
“Fairly friendly, I’d say. They’ve not tried pouncing yet. They’re sort of making me thirsty…”  
  
“Water?”  
  
James took a deep breath, resettled shoulders, took back some of his own weight. “Let’s try that.”  
  
Michael didn’t even get up, just scooted across the floor, left one hand laced into James’s, and swung protesting wood open a crack. James pulled a foot backwards, out of sight.  
  
Patrick and Ian must’ve been sitting directly on the other side; two pairs of eyes leapt onto his at the first sign of life. “Michael?”  
  
“How’s James?”  
  
“What do you need?”  
  
“Water,” Michael said, “kind of dusty in here,” and they exchanged crowded glances. Ian said, “Of course—” and hopped to his feet. Patrick scrutinized Michael’s face. “Better? Not good, but better?”  
  
“I think so.” He did. “Where’d everyone go?”  
  
“We told them to leave. We wouldn’t, of course.”  
  
“Of course,” Michael agreed—naturally everyone’d listen; Ian and Patrick had ways of making that happen that he’d never appreciated more—and glanced back over his shoulder. “It’s just Patrick out here now. And Ian, but he’s getting water. Want to try opening the door?”  
  
James seemed to be thinking this over, but in the end shook his head. Went back to gazing at the floor, memorizing linoleum-roses with lowered eyes.  
  
“Okay,” Michael told him, “that’s fine,” and shook his head at Patrick’s inquiring expression.  
  
Ian came back in, with impressive rapidity. “Water delivery, as requested?”  
  
“Thank you,” Michael said to them both; took the plastic bottle, and ducked back into their shabby sanctuary. “James? Here.”  
  
He watched James open the cap, tip liquid into his mouth, swallow; a few drops glittered on his lips, until he ran a tongue across to collect them. Michael was afraid to speak, to breathe, to interrupt the suddenly sacrosanct moment: James and the water, healing, in motion.  
  
James regarded the half-gone bottle with startled eyes. “Didn’t realize I needed it that badly.”  
  
“You might be dehydrated?” From passing out on a filthy bathroom floor. From gulping frantic chunks of air. From not-exactly-sobbing in Michael’s arms.  
  
The overhead light burned down on them, unaffected and implacable. He wanted to get them out from under it, to take James someplace soft and safe and plush with cushions and filled with the scents of sugary baked goods and exotic coffee. Wanted that so strongly his entire body ached with it. But he had to let James set the boundaries.  
  
“I might be.” Oh. James was answering. “It helps, I think. I feel more…awake. Less dizzy.”  
  
“You were feeling—”  
  
“More sort of lightheaded. Not enough air…” James held out the flimsy disposable plastic to him. “Did you want any? I can share.”  
  
“I got it for you. Well—technically Ian got it for you. But no, I’m okay.”  
  
“I think I might be, too. I mean, obviously I’m not. But…” Adroit fingers screwed the cap back onto the bottle, and sapphire-twilight eyes found Michael’s, and Michael came back over and sat beside him, shoulders touching. “…I might be able to get up. In a minute or two.”  
  
“Still no hurry.”  
  
“No, I know, but it’s getting better, and…” James fiddled with the water bottle, keeping hands occupied. The same way he’d played with the beer bottle, the first night he’d ever come over. Reassuring the world: we’re all present, we’re able to be touched, we’re real.  
  
“And I want to be okay. I don’t want to spend the night in a men’s toilet because two teenage fans decided my backside was attractive. I know that’s very much not a proportionate reaction. And you’re so—I wish I’d met you earlier. I can get up, if you ask me to.”  
  
“Not yet,” Michael said, and put an arm back around him, telegraphing the motion first. “I’m not asking. And I’m glad I met you at all. Don’t worry, James, please.”  
  
“You mean that…”  
  
“Yes, I do. I do also happen to think your backside is superbly attractive, but I promise not to touch it unless you say I can.”  
  
“In that case…I…might say yes. If it’s you. No one else.”  
  
“I like that arrangement. And I like you.” He kicked the door once more. It refused to close all the way, stubbornly leaving a crack of external light in their dimness.  
  
“I just feel so fucking helpless,” James said, forehead leaning against his. “I hate it.”  
  
“You’re not,” Michael said. “You called me. And you said you wanted to come home with me. You’re wonderful. You can’t convince me otherwise.”  
  
“So _tired_ ,” James said, and Michael answered, “We did decide my bed would be happy to see you” before catching the underlying truth in unhappy eyes. He drew a breath to form a different sentence, one that might somehow impossibly answer all that frightening final weariness, but then he realized James had started laughing at his reply, soundless and speculative and shaky with new emotion.  
  
“James?”  
  
“You,” James said, “you’re incredible,” and then shook his head and curled up against Michael’s chest and breathed for a while.  
  
Michael held him, leaning against the uncomfortable dingy wall of the bookshop toilet; left a kiss in James’s hair, over one temple, the places he could reach. Got a leg more or less cradling him, too, knee bent, keeping him sheltered. James’s breathing slowed, and steadied, and Michael hummed what he could recall of his mother’s favorite tune.  
  
The overhead light whirred at them, electric and benign. Outside the rain had begun, chattering pleasantly down from rooftops and eaves and streetlights, onto the road.  
  
He thought James had gone to sleep—which was fine, they could stay put, he could let James rest while the panic ebbed out of both their bodies—but a drowsy “Michael?” drifted up from his shoulder, as the drops pooled on the grimy windowpane.  
  
“Need something?”  
  
“If we stay here much longer I’m going to fall asleep. Home?”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“Patrick said everyone left—everyone else. And I know it’s getting late. I don’t want to make them keep the shop open.”  
  
“Not what I was asking.”  
  
“Yes, I’m sure.” James lifted his head from Michael’s shoulder. Their eyes met. “I’m not okay, but I can make it out of here. With you.”  
  
“Of course with me,” Michael said, indignant, “as if I’d leave you now,” and James leaned forward and kissed him, a fairy-wing whisper of lips over lips. “Of course you wouldn’t. I know.”  
  
“Oh,” Michael said, ludicrously stupidly happy—James had kissed him—and unable to process sentences, “oh, then—all right. Up?” And he got them both on their feet, his arm around James’s waist, and opened the door.  
  
Patrick and Ian scrambled to their feet, out in the bookshop, the larger world. And the concern in both pairs of eyes melted into thankfulness. Literal melting; Michael caught a glimpse of tears.  
  
“James—” Patrick said, and James conjured a smile from nowhere at all, vivid as survival in the storm. “Hi.”  
  
“Are you…how are you?”  
  
“Well…I’ve been better.” With a quick glance up at Michael, a lean into unwavering support. “I’ve also been worse. Thank you.”  
  
Patrick shook his head; Ian said, “Thank you,” and was looking at Michael by the end of the second word. “What do you want to do? It’s pouring unfortunate cats and dogs out there; would you like a ride home?”  
  
“Home…” Another bright flash of smile, this one clearer, bluer skies. “If you mean his place, then yes.” The pronoun came with a head-tilt indication, as if any of them needed it. Not as if Michael’d moved a millimeter from his side.  
  
Ian and Patrick traded glances. “We can certainly do that. Anything else, along the way? No trouble.”  
  
“No,” James said, head back on Michael’s shoulder, Michael’s arm cradling him. “We’ll be fine. We can…I can cook for you, maybe. Return the favor. Not tonight, but sometime.”  
  
Ian said, misty-eyed, “That would be lovely,” and Patrick put an arm around him too. “Shall we?”  
  
Together, all four of them, they did. The rain puddled at their feet, but kindly so. Michael wondered whether it was his imagination, or whether even the clouds were feeling protective toward James and lightening the downpour in one small corner of an ordinary British village on this single occasion.  
  
Had to be the latter. James adored the universe, from bent wrought-iron handrails to glimmering stars. The universe must therefore also want to adore and cherish and comfort James.  
  
Cherish. That was an excellent word. He tested it in his head, gazing at rain-speckled dark hair, liking the shortness, the way James fit along his side, under his arm.  
  
Yes. An entirely excellent word.

Patrick and Ian knew where he lived without being told. This fact surprised exactly nobody. Michael could’ve commented, but, mindful of closed blue eyes and that head resting on his shoulder in the warmth of the car, didn’t make any noise at all.  
  
He did nudge James’s nose with his, as they arrived. James yawned, sleepy-kitten adorable, and _didn’t_ jerk backwards at the sight of Michael’s face centimeters from his.  
  
Michael, feeling absurdly proud of this fact, explained, “We’re here,” and James blinked, puzzled. “Already?”  
  
“Not exactly, you know, very far away. Don’t get up yet?”  
  
“What…why…?” Not quite awake, even now. Michael smothered a laugh, and simultaneously the nibble of concern. Panic attacks. Post-traumatic stress. Nightmares. He didn’t know enough. No training, nothing in his life, to guide him through being support for someone so badly wounded. But he’d try, he’d try everything he could think of, forever.  
  
He hoped he was thinking of, if not the right things, at least not the wrong ones. He just _hoped_.  
  
Should James be this tired? This compliant, in the wake of the crisis?  
  
“Stay put,” he said, and ran around to open James’s door; James evidently either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore this, as the door swung out just before he got there.  
  
The rain hit him in the face, having decided he didn’t merit special treatment when not holding James. It was cold.  
  
One eyebrow lifted at him. “Were you planning to open the door for me? Or try to carry me in? Don’t tell me you were thinking the latter. I’m hardly insubstantial.”  
  
Michael gulped, skirted around the truth with, “No, you liked me opening doors for you, I thought, being a gentleman,” and earned the smile.  
  
“Ah. All right, then.”  
  
“Take care,” Patrick said, which was addressed to them both, but more so to Michael. “Call us tomorrow. Let us know…when you want to have dinner. We’ll be there.”  
  
“We’ll bring wine.”  
  
“We’ll even bring good wine.”  
  
“Thank you,” James said, meeting their eyes in turn, pale and lovely, stray drops of rain landing on his skin. “Thank you.”  
  
“Go on.”  
  
“Yes, do go on, Michael wants to kiss you.”  
  
“Really, do you have to—”  
  
“It’s true, or haven’t you looked at him in the past five minutes—”  
  
“Yes, darling, but you don’t need to say so out loud—”  
  
James laughed, held out hands, let Michael pull him up from the seat and into the refuge of one shared leather jacket. Michael didn’t wave, being preoccupied with getting James under shelter as rapidly as possible. He figured they’d understand.  
  
He walked James up the stairs and through the door and into his bedroom, rubbing the cold out of icy freckles, cupping his palms over night-bitten cheeks. “Can you change? Get warm, under the covers?”  
  
This provoked another vocal eyebrow-lift, but James didn’t argue, only nodded. Still unstable, then. Needing assistance.  
  
He bit his lip. Left one hand tangled in damp curling hair, cupping the side of James’s head, thumb skimming the edge of an eyebrow. “Ian’s not wrong. I do want to kiss you. I also want you to be warm. I’ll leave, and you can change clothes and get in bed, and I’ll make us cocoa, okay?”  
  
“Yes. Michael?”  
  
“I mean it about the bed. Under _all_ the blankets when I get back. What do you need?”  
  
Those eyes were huge, even wider with the raindrop hovering at the corner of one, caught in long eyelashes like a runaway tear. So blue, in the topaz-and-wood haven of the room. So very blue.  
  
“You can kiss me. I would…I might like that.”  
  
He’d not moved, hand unconsciously anchored in place; at the soft-voiced sincerity, his heart lit up in his chest, and simultaneously grew lighter, heaviness drawn back.  
  
James tasted like rainfall and the night: cool and liquid and moonlit and shadowed. Michael thought of mountain springs, ancient and ever-mobile; shockingly bright, near-painful crispness, but all the clearer for it.  
  
He didn’t try to make the kiss last too long, but he nipped lightly at a surrendered lower lip as he withdrew, catching it between his teeth. James gasped, and the enormity of those eyes changed, not fear but desire.  
  
“You know,” Michael said, softly, “I always want to kiss you, just like that,” and James turned a satisfying shade of pink and shoved at his shoulder. “Cocoa, you said.”  
  
“I did.” He paused in the doorway, caught that curious gaze, bowed extravagantly: your wish is all my commands. And went out into the other room to the accompaniment of laughter.  
  
When he came back in, James was dressed in too-long flannel fluff and a white cotton undershirt that wasn’t Michael’s, based on how well it fit the lines of his body. His arms were bare, and the freckles twinkled all the way up to sleeve-hems like a private mischievous invitation. Michael stood in the doorway, finally remembered to set his other foot down and finish the step, and held out a mug, speechless.  
  
James smiled; Michael stumbled out, “Wait—aren’t you—cold—quilt—” and the smile grew. “I will. But you kissed me.”  
  
“So…you…decided to be Christmas morning for me?”  
  
“Wouldn’t that mean you’d be unwrapping me?” James came over to him, because Michael’d remained unable to move. Plucked one mug out of his hand. Took a breath, went up on tiptoes, kissed parted lips, fleeting and intense. “We’ll have to see about that, maybe. Later.”  
  
“You,” Michael got out, voice creaking alarmingly, scraped raw with lust and worry and admiration, “bed? Warm?”  
  
They slid under the covers with James holding his hand. The complex ballet of cocoa-balancing was less important than not letting go.  
  
“Is there alcohol in this?”  
  
“Some. Not a lot.” There was, in fact, a decently large splash of spiced rum in each; he’d figured that might bring some color back to white skin. The freckles stood out starkly even now, stranded on recovering but bloodless shores. And his own hands had been unsteady, pouring. Seeing a water-bottle on the floor, hearing a broken Scottish accent call his name.  
  
He pondered James’s alcohol tolerance, and amended, “More like sort of a lot. Ounce and a half, about. I’m not trying to surprise you with it. I just…”  
  
“…thought I could use it?” James studied the depths of the cocoa as if reading the future in the swirls. Michael very badly wanted to know what they might be prophesying. “You’re not wrong. I feel…off-balance. Everywhere.”  
  
“Oh. This might not help with that.”  
  
“No, I like it. Like an internal heater. My hands’re cold.” James held up one, flexed fingers, scrutinizing. “They don’t look any different. I mean…I look normal. Like everyone else.”  
  
“You…think you aren’t?” He collected the cocoa mug from the unprotesting other hand. Set it on the bedside table. Rationing, perhaps. And he could try not to think about the icicle in his chest, courtesy of that last statement. “Why would you think that?”  
  
“Oh, because…” James looked at the cocoa a bit quizzically, as if surprised to find it out of his reach. And then shook his head. “I’m sorry. I keep making your life harder. I don’t know why you put up with me.”  
  
“Because I want to.” He held out both hands; after an eyeblink hesitation, James took them. “There isn’t anything wrong with you. Not a thing.”  
  
“Oh, god,” James said, and pulled his hands back and put them over his face. “Yes, there is, this—today—I can’t even walk into a fucking _bookshop_ , how can I ever—how can I be there for you if—I can’t be here for whatever you need, this isn’t fair, and it’s not okay, I’m not okay—”  
  
“This is about _me_?” He couldn’t keep the astonishment out of that pronoun. “James, I—I’m not asking you to be anything you’re not. I know you’re—hurt. I’ve known that all along. I’m still here.”  
  
“But why,” James said, muffled behind fingers.  
  
“I just said.” Michael reached over, paused with his hand arrested in the space between bodies. “I don’t want to—to put any pressure on you, so I’m asking, is it all right if I touch you? I won’t, unless you say I can.”  
  
James breathed in and accepted, “You can,” and Michael put an arm around his shoulders and drew him close; James dropped his forehead onto an available shoulder, with substantial despairing force. “I’m so sorry. I’m not normally this…precarious.”  
  
“Well,” Michael said logically, “you’ve had a busy few weeks,” and James let out a sound someplace between a laugh and a sob and a sigh. “Good weeks, though. I’m lucky you ran into me.”  
  
“I think that’s my line.” He ran a hand through all that animated hair. Wayward strands looped themselves around his fingers, coming back to life. “And…it’s not about being okay. I mean…there’s not some standard, some sort of…universal definition. You’re not all right because someone else says so, or, you know, not. You’re all right because this is who you are. And who you are is…you made blackberry tarts for five hundred people as a favor, and you worried about me getting wet when you didn’t even know me, and you told me I knew something about stories and acting and—if you think that’s not being all right then there’s probably no hope for the rest of us. I mean, you’re sort of perfect.”  
  
“Perfect…” James laughed again, weightless, quivering. “I would very much like to kiss you. I don’t know…can you kiss me? Please?”  
  
“Of course.” He met jewel-blue eyes, leaned in gradually, giving James enough time to pull away. That didn’t happen, and their lips brushed, piercing and unspeakable as joy.  
  
James kept his eyes open. Their brightness, in that moment, would stay in Michael’s memory forever. Every time, he thought. Whenever he closed his own. Or when he opened them, to see that happiness again.  
  
James tasted like cocoa and rum and hidden laughter, the smile in the curve of the half-moon, or the bare silver elegance of an autumn tree-branch, stripped to an elemental beauty. Full of light, even if that wasn’t the easiest to see at times; right now, one hand tentatively sliding to the back of Michael’s neck, it was.  
  
He licked at the corner of that mouth, the point where lips came together; nibbled chocolate spice from those lips, and coaxed James’s tongue into meeting his, coming to find him, taking everything Michael wanted to give him and giving himself in turn.  
  
The rain tumbled and bounced and cheered for them, beyond the walls. Made the rented room, the secondhand bed, into an oasis. Shelter from the harshness beyond.  
  
James didn’t seem inclined to stop, other arm going around Michael’s neck with no hesitation. Michael tugged him closer, hands at his waist, securing that compact frame in his embrace. A thrill went through his body, head to toes, at the way James sighed and came willingly, seeking out his touch.  
  
 _Too_ willingly? Too easily? The spiked cocoa danced over his tongue. James was kissing him back, had asked to be kissed, but.  
  
A subtle thin icicle crawled its way down his spine, uninvited and unwanted but also undeniable. But.  
  
James was scared and vulnerable and not thinking straight. Trusted Michael to take care of him.  
  
Needed comfort, not anyone taking advantage. Needed someone who’d be…trustworthy.  
  
With agonizing unwillingness, he pulled back, and let that mouth slip from his, shining and wet and loose and kiss-reddened.  
  
James didn’t seem to understand at first, gaze resting on Michael’s mouth, all heavy-lidded langorous blue; and then when Michael didn’t move back in, the blue got swamped by confusion. “You—I thought—”  
  
“James, I can’t—”  
  
“Oh.” One syllable. Hardly even a sound. The confusion was gone. James thought the reason was clear. Thought the reason was…  
  
“No! James, sorry, sorry, I want you, I do, you have no idea how much I’d want to—” He yanked his mouth back on course and away from detailing all the most lurid aspects of his fantasies. “Not now. You—this wouldn’t be fair to you. I want this to happen when you want it. When you feel safe.”  
  
“I do—”  
  
“When you’re not off-balance and I’ve just given you rum.”  
  
James breathed out, a lonely exhale. Toyed with a fraying thread on the quilt. The rain tattooed sorrow on the windowpane.  
  
“Please look at me?”  
  
“You’re a good person.” Not lifting eyes from the thread. Easier to watch than Michael’s face, apparently. “I’m trying to believe that’s why.”  
  
He let that first statement go. He wasn’t sure he agreed; but the idea that James thought so made his toes warm. “Why is because I don’t want to hurt you. I like kissing you. I do want more. I don’t want you to regret this.”  
  
Gaze still averted, but a hint of humor in that spectacular voice: “Certain parts of me regret _this_.”  
  
“Oh. Well. Me, too?” He kept himself from looking lower than blue eyes, determinedly, but tried for a smile, a head-tilt, a shrug with eyebrows: James could look, if he wanted.  
  
Evidently James did.  
  
“…oh. Ah. That looks…uncomfortable. And also…inspiring.”  
  
“I don’t mind, and I’m glad you approve?”  
  
“Very much approving, yes. Michael?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
I love you. On the tip of his tongue. So near. He said, “Come here,” and held out an arm. “Please. Rest.”  
  
“I won’t be able to sleep. I’m—it’s like being tired everywhere, but my head is awake. Thinking.”  
  
“I can…read to you, if you want?”  
  
“As a distraction?” The infinite blue held less sadness and a few more sparkles, accepting the closeness. “For you, or for me?”  
  
“Both?”  
  
And James laughed, frustration present but ebbing, in his arms.  
  
Michael poked at the laptop for a few minutes, came up with a digital copy of _The Hobbit_ —James did like Tolkien; had admitted, laughter in the narrow bookshop aisles, that he’d quite like to be Gandalf—and started from the beginning, supported by the melody of the rain.  
  
He thought that James might be drifting off, head pillowed on his chest, eyes falling shut. His own arousal wasn’t going anywhere, not with that delectable shape curled into his and the scent of lingering rain-damp and cocoa and apple shampoo in his nose; but he liked the sensation, tucking it away in some hidden space of his heart. He could wait. He could take all the persistent unfulfilled need and carry it as long as he had to. For James.  
  
Who yawned, kitten-soft and drowsy, and murmured, “I’m not asleep,” to Michael’s shoulder.  
  
“Of course you’re not.” He went back to dwarves and adventures with trolls. James yawned again, struggling. “Thank you for the Tolkien. You remembered…”  
  
“Shh. You’re interrupting Bilbo.”  
  
“Mmm….”  
  
James’s breathing evened out around the Misty Mountains. Michael set his laptop aside, couldn’t quite reach the light-switch despite futile attempts to stretch his arm another few centimeters, and eased them both down into the pillows instead, arms securely back in place. James made an inquisitive sound, half-waking; Michael kissed his eyebrow gently, stroked hair out of his face, and pulled him close, resting his own cheek atop energetic hair.  
  
He couldn’t quite see the time, from amid the pillows. Earlier than he’d normally be asleep; earlier than he’d even be home, any other day. And they’d not had any non-cocoa food this evening, at which realization his stomach belatedly woke up and protested.  
  
Silence, he ordered that complaining internal organ, don’t ruin this, and shut his eyes, holding on to James. The world spun beneath them; he imagined he could feel the lazy rotation, celestial and content. He could hold James and they could both feel safe while it turned.  
  
The rain softened, chattered, gossiped to the streetlights and old bricks and starshine. The lamplight glowed topaz in the bedroom; he had his eyes closed, but he could feel it. Warm. Like the fit of James in his arms. In his life.  
  
He’d been there for James. He’d done something right. Pride and wonder tangled themselves up in his chest. James had let him be there.  
  
The quilt was slightly scratchy on his bare arms, rough patches and those loose threads. He considered trying to pull the sheet up higher as a shield.  
  
“…Michael?”  
  
“F—sorry, sorry, go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.”  
  
“Still not asleep.”  
  
This was patently a lie; Michael raised an eyebrow, nose to nose with tangled eyelashes.  
  
“Oh, all right…I was…a little. In and out. Is that your stomach?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Are you hungry?”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
“I’m all right,” Michael said, and tightened his arms in their place, “I’m comfortable,” and it was true.  
  
“So am I.”  
  
“Good?”  
  
“Yes. One thing, though…”  
  
“Anything you need.”  
  
“I still can’t sleep,” James whispered, and then leaned forward and kissed him, not fearful at all, only sincere and unwavering desire.  
  
Michael tore his mouth away long enough to gasp, “James—” and James stopped, noses bumping, breath mingling. “It’s not about needing an anchor. Or your rum. I swear it’s not.”  
  
“It’s—”  
  
“It’s because I want this. I want you. Right now, right here, I want this to happen. If we don’t—I might wake up tomorrow and be too scared to try again, and I don’t want to be too scared to try again, I don’t want to’ve never had this, I want this over and over again with you—”  
  
“Yes,” Michael whispered back, “yes, _yes_ ,” and stopped the words with his lips, licking all the sentences out of that remarkable mouth, loving the way James opened up for him, head falling back, letting Michael delight in him, the taste of his skin, the hint of ginger stubble beginning to emerge over the shyest freckles, the soft gasp when teeth bit down on that full lower lip. He knew James liked that one. He wasn’t wrong.  
  
James reached for him, eyes shut, hands running up his biceps; Michael couldn’t resist the impulse to flex a little. James laughed.  
  
“Oh, you’re finding that amusing…”  
  
“No…” James opened both eyes; the blue glinted up languidly, happily, excitedly. “I like it. I like the way you feel.”  
  
“Well,” Michael said, “in that case,” and rolled them over so that he ended up on top, James’s feet brushing his ankles, his weight mostly on James and partly on his own elbows, just to be safe.  
  
James grinned, stretched—the ocean-waves of those eyes danced, when he realized he couldn’t reach as far as Michael’s toes with his—and then brought both legs up and hooked them around Michael’s waist.  
  
“Oh god,” Michael said. His arms actually shook.  
  
James laughed again, tipped that head up, and kissed him, slow and sinful. Their tongues met, leisurely, decadent, inviting. James was, he thought, a brilliant kisser; he shouldn’t be surprised, because James was brilliant at everything, writing and cooking and mending broken hearts like the pieces of Michael’s own, which were tumbling back together at every sideways smile and every sign of trust and every proclamation that James wanted him for _him_ , saw everything he was and wasn’t and still chose him—  
  
James lifted hips, and even through layers of fabric the hard evidence of that desire pressed against his, and every thought in the universe fell out of Michael’s brain.  
  
James wanted him. James _wanted_ him. He slid a hand under James’s head, coaxing him up from the pillow, needing to touch him every possible place. James made a sound, somewhere between a moan and a gasp, and kissed him back, openmouthed and wet and shyly uninhibited.  
  
And then ventured hands up Michael’s back, under his shirt. Flattened warm palms over skin.  
  
Michael stopped. Balanced awkwardly on one arm; held James with the other. “You…do you want me to…I can take the shirt off?”  
  
James’s lips curved into a smile, outlined by butter-soft lamplight. Gold in the night. The storm billowed. “Yes, you can. And then…everything else.”  
  
In the instant hush, thunder rumbled. Michael ignored the commentary. The thunder didn’t know how much the moment meant. _Might_ mean.  
  
“James…you…you _do_ want me to be naked?”  
  
“I’d like us both to be naked, but you would be a good start.”  
  
“But…I mean…” He licked his lips; one of James’s gestures, one he’d picked up unnoticing. “I want to. I definitely want to. But you said, last time…and you’ve just…tonight…”  
  
“Ah.” James glanced down, nibbled at his own lip, an unconscious mirror. But looked back up, gaze more eager than the lightning. “When I said I wanted to…I meant I wanted to try to have sex with you. I mean I want to. I want you. I feel…”  
  
Another pause, another distant rumble; Michael whispered, “You feel what?” and shifted weight, elbow protesting his weight.  
  
“I feel happy, I think.” James’s eyes were laughing, all at once: brimming over with it. “I’m all right, and I’m here, and I’m with you, and I’m just _happy_ , I—will you please be naked now, or do I have to ask you again?”  
  
“—so fucking _perfect_ ,” Michael said, and kissed him, fierce and decisive. “Want me to strip for you?”  
  
“No,” James said, “I want to help,” and pounced on his shirt, sending it flying. “Very nice.”  
  
“Nice?”  
  
“Oh, you know what I mean. Can I…”  
  
“Anything you want.”  
  
Sea-sapphire eyes danced, meeting his, speculation in the waves; James put a hand on his chest, sliding fingers over taut skin, the inhale and exhale of his breathing. Lower, tracing the planes of his stomach, flattening over lean muscle.  
  
Michael was holding his breath; James glanced up at him again, and then bent down and licked at a nipple, tongue determined and wet and electric against the peak.  
  
Michael tried to inhale, forgot how, and ended up choking on air. James laughed. “Good? Also, I thought you were being naked.”  
  
“Extremely good. You…you. James. Yes.”  
  
“Up,” James said, and gave him an imperious little wave. “Pants. Everything.”  
  
Michael promptly rolled to his feet, flicked open his belt, and then froze in place as freckled hands snuck in under his and tugged his jeans down. “James—”  
  
“These too.” Plucking at the last bit of fabric; those, too, ended up on the floor, before Michael could get out any sort of preparatory statement.  
  
James’s eyes went wide. “Well. Hello, you.”  
  
“Are…you…talking to my…”  
  
“It’s impressive!”  
  
“Sorry, I should’ve—”  
  
“What, warned me?” With a laugh. “I like it. I like knowing how you look, when you want me…knowing you want me…this much…” The hand that’d been resting on his hip, as he stood there at the side of the bed, drifted forward. Found his straining erection. Trailed more fire along superheated skin.  
  
He might’ve whimpered. James breathed out, and looked at his own hand wrapped around Michael’s cock, the length of it jutting out from his grip, flushed and obviously wanting.  
  
And then made that grip a bit firmer, and began to stroke him, fingers finding a rhythm, sliding along his length. Pausing to flick the tip, acquiring moisture, repeating the movement.  
  
“James…” Practically a groan; not his fault. He let his hands fall onto James’s shoulders, sturdy muscles beneath the well-worn cotton shirt. Remembered in time to keep the touch light, undemanding.  
  
James leaned forward. Kissed the line of his hipbone, drawn-out and pensive. Michael fought to keep balance, even more so at the sight of that dark head bent to nibble and tease and breathe over his skin.  
  
His cock was aching, balls drawn tight, and James’s mouth was _right_ _there_ , but he couldn’t ask, he couldn’t, even as that hand slowed, a maddening loss of sensation…  
  
James took a deep breath—he could feel it, over just-kissed thin skin—and looked up at him.  
  
And touched lips to the tip of Michael’s swollen cock, very gently, and then parted them, and took him in.  
  
“Oh god—” He knew he was talking, babbling, desperate needy sounds. Couldn’t seem to stop. James’s mouth was hot and sweet and fucking _amazing_ , so good, so talented, those lips stretched wide around his girth; James glanced up at him deliberately, through lowered lashes, and then relaxed completely around  him and Michael’s cock pressed down into his _throat_ , god, he could feel it—  
  
James held him in place for a moment, every last inch, and it took all of Michael’s self-control and more, restraint he’d never known he had, not to start moving, pushing in and out of him, fucking him, watching those blue eyes turn hazy and that mouth grow sticky and wet and well-used with desire, the way he was offering himself to be used…  
  
James pulled back, looked at him, questioning. The head of Michael’s cock rested at his lips. Air puffed teasingly over slick skin, when he spoke. “All right?”  
  
“I—yes—you—oh, fuck, James, you—you’re incredible—are _you_ all right?”  
  
“Enjoying myself, I think.” With a quick swipe of tongue, collecting droplets. Michael’s knees wobbled. “I like the way you taste. The way you feel. I could keep doing this…”  
  
“Yes please.”  
  
“…or we could…get me naked. I did say.”  
  
“You did,” Michael said, and sat down on the bed beside him, naked and ignoring his own bobbing arousal. “Only if you want that.”  
  
“I want you.” James ran a thoughtful finger along the collar of his shirt. Michael’s mouth went correspondingly dry. “I can do this. Can you maybe…not move, for a minute?”  
  
“Of course.” Anything. He wanted to say so: anything, James, ever. Just ask.  
  
He put both hands behind his back, and looked hopefully into blue eyes.  
  
James laughed, leaned in and up and kissed him, and then pulled the shirt off over his head. One fluid motion.  
  
Michael felt his lips part, of their own volition. James _was_ that beautiful.  
  
“Hmm…” The Scottish-velvet accent lingered over the sound. Burnished contemplation with exotic richness. “One more minute.”  
  
Michael nodded, unable to do anything else, and gazed at celebrations of freckles, cinnamon-gold scatterings over neatly defined muscle, compact and elegant and neat. James blushed, tinting all the star-maps with pink. “Do I want to know what you’re thinking?”  
  
“How much I want to taste you?”  
  
“I could be happy being tasted,” James said, and then did something complicated and flexible and sinuous, a movement that ended with flannel fuzziness on the floor and the whole universe of freckles on display in his bed, not a stitch of clothing left at all, and no shame.  
  
Michael said “James,” and then, “oh god,” and then, “oh, fuck, you’re fucking beautiful,” and James started laughing in the lamplight, all ruby-flecked pale skin and runner’s thighs and delicious short waist, curves and lines like an alphabet just waiting to be decoded, a language to which Michael was being freely given the key.  
  
James also had lovely nipples, interested and begging for attention; was lovely other places as well, cock standing up between his legs, flushed with want and gorgeously thick and heavy. Michael had wanted to taste him before. Wanted to taste _all_ of him now.  
  
“So,” James said, amusement rippling plain through that windblown-loch accent, “what was that, about your plans for me?” and Michael dove for him, caught him, pushed him flat on the bed—carefully, with open hands, not pinning him down—and kissed him soundly, lips, throat, shoulder, until James was panting, moaning, shuddering beneath him. He let his mouth drift lower. Bit experimentally at a tempting nipple. James gasped his name; he did it harder, scrape of teeth over sensitive nerve endings, and James nearly screamed.  
  
Michael paused, licked apologetically over the peak, and James gasped, “Please—more—” so he did it more, nibbling and teasing, leaving the right one pink and tender; provided the other side with equal consideration, and James was sobbing his name in little puffs of air, hips moving against his.  
  
“More?”  
  
“Please…”  
  
Lower, again: mouth wandering over stomach, the hollow of a hip, the sweet untanned line of one inner thigh. Capturing all of James, with tongue and teeth and pressure, leaving the imprints of himself scattered over the freckles, marking them, wanting them, learning them all.  
  
He breathed out over the tip of James’s cock, wet already, and another small drop surfaced at the tip. He needed to taste that; so he did.  
  
James pushed up against him, unconsciously and then again deliberately, eyes open and watching his face. Michael slipped hands under his backside, cupping and lifting—James felt delectable there too, curves made for his hands—and kept him from pulling back. Slid his mouth over that delicious length again, and took him in, all the way to the base in one long glide.  
  
James made an entirely wonderful sound. Tasted wonderful as well: heated arousal, a hint of clean laundry, a sprinkle of nutmeg and cream that might just be Michael’s imagination or might in fact be the flavor of those freckles, of opulent uncovered skin.  
  
Michael licked at him, sucked at him, devoured the weight and scent and feel of him; memorized by heart all the positions and rhythms and angles that earned gasps and shivers and helpless thrusts deeper into his mouth. James’s hands found his shoulders, his head, wove into his hair; not pushing, no pressure, unthinkingly holding on. Michael grinned to himself, and flicked his tongue upward, beneath the head, right where he knew it’d make James twitch and jerk in response and clutch at his hair.  
  
He’d not done this too often, lately or ever, in times past. With one other person, to be precise. But he had thought he’d been good at it, then. In what tiny coherent brain-space he had left, he was rather proud that he still was. Could use those skills for James. To make this, yes, perfect.  
  
Somewhere in that reaction he heard his name, enfolded in a sob; he let James’s cock slip from his mouth, dripping and rock-hard and obscene. His lips were sticky; he licked them, chasing the taste. “Still good?”  
  
“Yes…so fucking…Michael…” James was shivering, eyes enormous, dark as midnight at sea; he looked positively despoiled, innocent bashful freckles covered with darkening marks, lips wet and bitten red, voice ragged from Michael’s cock down his throat, from his own tiny cries and moans and pants. Michael’s whole body throbbed with need, a near-orgasm on the spot.  
  
“Fucking…me?” he said, because it’d make James laugh, because it might ease the intensity a bit. It did. He felt triumphant.  
  
“Yes,” James whispered. “Yes, please, except sort of the other way around, I want you inside me, please…”  
  
“You want me to do that with you?” He had to be sure he’d heard that correctly. To know that James meant it. “To—you’re all right with that? With me…inside you?” He shifted position, kissed a beckoning shoulder. It was there to be kissed. “Don’t say yes if you don’t want to.”  
  
“What makes you think I don’t?” James put a hand out, nudged his chin up, kissed him squarely on the lips, heedless of any residual stickiness. “I trust you. I want you. You won’t hurt me.”  
  
“Never,” Michael vowed, “not ever, I promise, James, I—yes. Are you…do we need…oh fuck I don’t even know if I have—” He’d not bought anything. Had considered it, a day or so previously; had been too unsure that they’d get here, certainly not this soon.  
  
“Condoms?” James took a breath, licked his lips. Michael had a flash of vivid thought—could James taste himself, left on his mouth from the kiss?—and had to remind himself to exhale. “We…could…if you trust me about this…I’ll believe you if you tell me we’re good. Are we?”  
  
“Yes,” Michael whispered back, word incredibly faint because he was feeling so incredulous. James was offering…everything. To him.  
  
He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve such faith, but he was going to be worthy of it. And of James.  
  
“Yes,” he said again. “We’re good.” And he knew, with the answering smile, that they both heard it the same way.  
  
“We need…I have…lotion? Don’t move.”  
  
James tucked a hand behind his head, lounging on Michael’s bed like every flawless daydream come to extraordinary reality. “Wasn’t planning on it.”  
  
Michael tumbled off the bed, was instantly jealous of his sheets for still touching the freckles, and lunged for the lotion, where it was lurking in a dresser drawer. Flung himself back across the room and onto the bed and proceeded to kiss James everywhere. The sheets couldn’t do that.  
  
James was laughing. “You missed me that much? In five seconds?”  
  
“Yes. Tell me—” He paused to meet dancing blue eyes. “Tell me if you need to stop. Even if you’re only not sure. I’ll stop. I want you to know I mean that.”  
  
“I know.” Smiling up at him, fearless and assured. “Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I told you I trust you.”  
  
“Then…I’m going to touch you…” He ran a fingertip around the base of James’s taut erection, liking the way the length jumped at the touch. Walked the fingers back, over tight-drawn weight, over the most private spaces of that body, displayed for him. Only for him.  
  
“…here,” he finished, and skimmed fingertips over the small crinkle of muscle, teasing. James gasped. Michael paused, checking; jewel-box eyes held the yes he was seeking, visible and certain.  
  
“All right. We’ll make it slow…very slow, if you want that…my fingers inside you, just sliding in…like this, in and out…” The lotion wasn’t ideal, but it’d work for tonight. He watched the tip of his finger press in, slick and slippery. Disappearing inside James.  
  
Who sighed, and shivered, and opened up for him readily: tight around his hand, of course, unused to the invasion, but purely profoundly willing to be invaded. To be his.  
  
Michael caught his breath; the air was scented with lotion, something forested and pine-sharp and snow-bright. He thought of holidays, of unadulterated delight and desire; remembered James’s comment about being unwrapped, and wanted to laugh, and cry, and smile.  
  
“More,” James whispered, “keep talking, please, that was—I like you talking,” and Michael realized he’d paused, lost in the moment.  
  
“Sorry. You do like me talking…you like me telling you what I’m doing, what I want to do, to you…”  
  
“Yes _please_.”  
  
“You should see yourself, James. All wet, and stretched open around my fingers…you do like two?...the way you move…” He crooked the fingers, searching, seeking. “Are you imagining my cock inside you? Sliding in, like _this_ …”  
  
Ah. _That_ was the right spot. James cried his name, body lifting up from the bed. Michael grinned, showing teeth. More pressure. Harder strokes. A brief break, just enough to keep blue eyes guessing. Then again.  
  
James was all but sobbing after the third start and stop, on the edge between pleasure and pain, and pressed the back of one hand over his mouth as if trying to stifle all the desperate noises. “Don’t,” Michael told him, “I want to hear you,” and reached for that wrist and lifted it above dark hair and anchored it to the pillow.  
  
James gasped again, eyes blue and black as tempests at sea, and his body tightened around Michael’s hand, instinctive and involuntary.  
  
“Oh,” Michael breathed, “oh, you like that, you want me to keep you here, to make you know you’re mine, and you are, James, I want all of you,” and he saw James’s cock respond, a pulse of liquid gathering at the slit, beading over flushed skin.  
  
“Please,” James whispered, “please, Michael, yes, everything—all of that—I want you, please,” and the smoked-velvet accent was crumpled now, tattered and frayed with need, pleading for relief.  
  
He could give James that relief. He _would_.  
  
He tested fingers, twisting, stretching, working James open in earnest. Extra lotion, smoothing out the entrance. James didn’t move the arm from above his head, even when Michael’s hand briefly left his wrist and returned. Only looked up at him, eyes shining.  
  
He lifted gorgeously freckled legs, and fit himself between them; lined up, and pushed.  
  
Like coming home. Like bliss.  
  
James was unimaginably tight and hot and slick around him, body taking him in; the scent of winter and forests filled the night. Lamplight painted gold and shadows across the freckles, that pale stomach, chest, arms lying across the pillow; he’d never seen anything as glorious as James in that second.  
  
James blinked, once, eyelashes sweeping through the light. Lips parted, but didn’t speak.  
  
“James?” With another tiny nudge forward; he couldn’t help it. “Good? Talk to me?”  
  
One more blink, and Michael understood that some of the tension wasn’t desire, in sudden stillness. His heart lurched. “James, please. Do you want to stop?”  
  
“No! No.” James looked up at him, smile returning, astonished but real. “No. I like the way you feel. It’s just…you’re sort of…awfully large. And I—it’s been a long time.”  
  
“Should…I…apologize? How can I make this easier, for you?” He leaned down, captured mobile lips in a kiss. James laughed into his mouth.  
  
“You shouldn’t. And this helps, I think…”  
  
“Will it help more if I touch you?” He’d had both hands spreading and supporting pale thighs, pushing them up and back; he let James’s legs drop—James promptly wrapped them around his waist, which made him inadvertently push forward and then search sapphire depths for any signs of pain—and traced the lines of a bicep, a forearm, up to that tempting wrist. “You did like this…”  
  
“I like—what you were saying. Being held by you, being held down by you—not hard, but—” James was blushing a little, happy, embarrassed. “I don’t know. I never knew I could want that. But yes…”  
  
Michael kissed him for that, and stretched fingers out and found the other wrist too, and collected them both under one hand, and then was thoroughly glad he had large hands.  
  
James inhaled under his weight, enough that he could feel the motion. “That…”  
  
“You want to feel like you’re mine?” A question, but he thought he knew the answer even before the nod, before James whispered, “Like I belong with you.”  
  
“You do,” Michael told him, and moved the other hand, wrapped it around the heated shaft between their bodies, and stroked him up and down, not too fast but firm, thumb flicking over the head as James trembled and another pulse of wetness escaped. “You do.”  
  
James moaned his name, eyes losing coherence, unfocused with desire; shifted position slightly beneath him, and Michael felt himself push forward, deeper, penetration welcome now. James sighed, a long exhale of desire, and rocked hips up against him, and that was the tipping point, he could feel himself falling, too much; he pulled back and slid in, faster now, hard and less than gentle, but that was all right because James was moving with him, matching him, taking it all as Michael thrust into him, making openmouthed breathless sounds that resonated through Michael’s body, and one of those sounds was his name, and he was going to come, he could feel the building crest of it—  
  
He closed his hand roughly around James’s cock and thrust one more time, knowing he’d hit that spot when James went rigid under him, shaking with release, eyes slamming shut and a flood of wet heat erupting over Michael’s hand, across his own stomach, between their bodies. And Michael could only gaze in awe for a single second, because he was coming too, wave after wave of unendurable bliss, himself spilling out inside James while James tightened and shuddered around him.  
  
He collapsed on top of all the freckles in the aftermath. Didn’t mean to. Couldn’t not.  
  
He vaguely remembered to liberate captive wrists, through the haze of ebbing sparkles. James made a different small sound, and then put both freed arms around him, face buried in Michael’s neck, shivering.  
  
“Shh,” Michael managed, panting; got a hand under his head, cradling him. “James. You—did I—are you—okay?”  
  
A nod, but no words. The thunder came back, outside, and rolled loudly along the clouds. And James was still trembling, hands clinging to his back.  
  
“Okay…you don’t have to talk…oh, god, you’re shaking…are you…cold? Can I hold you?” He needed to ask _did I hurt you?,_ but couldn’t shove the horrific phrase off his tongue.  
  
But James stopped clinging quite so tightly, and breathed out. Tipped his head back into Michael’s hand. Looked up, and those eyes were so very blue. Summer skies at sundown. Banners over the horizon. Flying free.  
  
Michael was aware that he was staring. Couldn’t look away.  
  
“I’m all right,” James whispered, “I’m wonderful,” and then flung the arms around him again, laughing, and Michael began laughing too, tired and sweaty and sticky and careless of it all, because the elation was singing in his bones, in the babble of the rain, in James’s answering smile.  
  
“Michael,” James said, eyes and voice all bright with merriment.  
  
“James?”  
  
“I’m very glad I asked you to be naked.”  
  
Michael started laughing again, helplessly. Got out, “James?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“My bed _definitely_ adores you.”  
  
“Well, I adore it,” James said, and drew him down into another kiss, hand tangling in Michael’s hair, Michael’s cock softening and slipping inside his body, secret and intimate and sending tingles up Michael’s spine, “and I’m exceedingly happy with the person sharing it, too.”  
  
“Happy…” That word. On those lips, in the breath between them.  
  
“Yes,” James said, looking at him, eyes straightforwardly honest. “I am.”  
  
“Yes,” Michael said back, truth returned for truth, “so am I.”  
  
The thunder, in the skies above, applauded with unrestrained might.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is more sex, Michael has a request about respective positions, and James is willing to try; also, revelations about James's past, at last...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for non-explicit mention of attempted non-con in James's past.

The night was young, and it unfolded leisurely around them in multifaceted sweetnesses. No sense of urgency, no external demands, no intrusions. Only the two of them, falling into each other to the rustle of rain.  
  
They held each other in bed, under the clashing colors of the quilt; got up and ran to the shower, hand in hand, and Michael tugged James close under the leaping splash of the water, bodies colliding breathlessly, and kissed him everywhere, head to toe, which made James start laughing. Soap-suds and shampoo and diligent hands went everywhere, hands that became less than diligent when blue eyes sparkled up at him and talented fingers snuck around Michael’s half-hard cock. This invitation ended with James pushed up against the back wall of the shower with Michael thrusting inside him and James’s arousal pulsing through the circle of Michael’s hand and moans fortunately disguised by the noisy waterfall around them.  
  
It was indeed a tiny shower. Meant they had to be very close. Lots of touching, the entire time. Michael hit his head on the wall at one point. It didn’t hurt that much, but he let James kiss the spot anyway. Several times, just to be sure.  
  
Back into bed, James naked and lovely, all shower-pink and clean and innocently freckled. Michael knew by now that James was _not_ innocent, and approved.  
  
He folded the quilt around the freckles. “I’ll be right back, okay?”  
  
“Where’re you going?”  
  
“Food? I can cook, you know. Not like you can, but, um, my father was a chef. I learned a few…sort of…things. Recipes. I can cook for you.”  
  
“We can cook together,” James said, lifting eyebrows at him: I’m not fragile, I’m not going to sit here and be pampered. Michael winced, but that Scottish-amber voice was already going on.  
  
“You could show me one of those recipes, if you wanted. Something you learned from him.”  
  
“Oh,” Michael said, breath snatched away by happiness, “yes, I could—not tonight, we should make a plan, we’d need to go shopping—yes,” and James got up from the bed, dropped the quilt, put both hands on Michael’s face, and kissed him.  
  
They ended up with tomato bisque, mostly because it was manageable in five minutes and good fortification against the blustery storm. James eyed Michael’s bread thoughtfully, and then found cheddar and two lonely apples and made grilled cheese miracles happen on the stove. Michael threw garlic into the soup pot and said, “You’re wonderful,” and nudged him with a shoulder because he had garlic on his hands. James transferred food to plate, came back, put both arms around his waist from behind, and rested his head between Michael’s shoulderblades, breathing.  
  
Curled up in bed, they devoured food and tangled their legs together; Michael remembered a certain story and went hunting around on the internet, discovered footage of a particular convention panel, and hit play, gleefully. James said, “Oh god no” and dove under the quilt; Michael laughed, and watched clearly tipsy blue eyes get more and more affectionate and easily distracted and excitable throughout the discussion.  
  
“Turn that off,” James said from under the quilt, “unless you want to see me kiss another man onstage.”  
  
“Are you planning to stay under there? Can you breathe?”  
  
“Yes and yes. I can also do _this_ under here…”  
  
Michael yelped. The tongue did _that_ again. His body was suddenly taking James’s side in regards to the video.  
  
On the laptop, James widened gorgeous eyes at the older man beside him, answered a question about sexuality in science fiction, nodded at the next fan who got up to take the microphone.  
  
“I was very young and making poor decisions about alcohol,” James observed, mouth busy on sensitive skin. “And scared as hell. Hence the alcohol. David got me water, after. I think he was concerned.”  
  
Michael stared at the screen. David was at least twice James’s age. Not unattractive. He was torn between jealousy and gratefulness that the man had cared for James and not taken advantage.  
  
He didn’t really need to see James kiss his fellow author, though. Particularly not when an active hand was tiptoeing up his thigh.  
  
He scooted the laptop onto the nearest flat surface. Wriggled under the quilt. James blinked at him, through the pink-and-green-filtered light. “I wasn’t done licking that. You moved.”  
  
“You said you were scared,” Michael said, feeling James breathing, in and out, chest pressed to his.  
  
“I’m not scared now,” James said, and put both arms and one leg around him. The kiss tasted like cozy tomato and autumn apples; James had saved two apple slices, sprinkled them with brown sugar, and fed him one, five minutes before.  
  
The rain bounced and rattled on the windowpane. The night blossomed into desire anew.  
  
This time, he took James’s hand in his, laced their fingers together, set it on his hip, then lower. Heard the inhale as James picked up the intent.  
  
It’d been some time since he’d offered this to anyone; not only since Steve, though Steve had taken it and him, had pulled Michael down into his lap and held him in place while shoving upward into him. Steve hadn’t asked, and so it hadn’t really been an offer. It hadn’t been _bad_. Simply expected.  
  
He’d loved the feeling of James around him, beneath him, all huge dark eyes and eager freckles and joyful surrender. He wanted that more; he wanted that forever. And if James preferred that every time, if James were uncomfortable being asked to be on top, then Michael would kiss him and roll them back over and take him again, and it wouldn’t be settling, it’d simply be what they both wanted. Together.  
  
He did want James, though. Wanted, with a reckless intensity he’d never known, to let James push him onto his back and open him up with those freckled fingers and claim every inch of him; he wanted to give James all of himself, to have all those empty forlorn places inside him filled up by the touch of generous lips and hands and the arousal he could feel pressed against his thigh.  
  
He looked up at James, still holding their hands together. Those extraordinary eyes were all sapphire-dust startlement; but the sparkle in the sapphires was excitement, even if hesitantly so. Like wonder, he thought. Enchantment. He wasn’t sure which of them was under the spell; he suspected it was himself.  
  
“I…” James licked his lips. Michael heard the desire, but also the hint of trepidation, lacing that voice. “I’ve never actually…I will, if you want. I want you. You’ll have to tell me how to do this, though. What you like.”  
  
“You’re what I like,” Michael said, and James ducked his head, blush visible even in the brightly lit bedroom. Said, after a second, “Extremely nice of you but not very helpful,” audible compromise between deflection of the compliment and acceptance of the moment.  
  
Michael wanted to put both hands in all that shower-messy hair and tug him into a kiss; one hand was occupied, though, so he settled for sitting up and kissing parted lips as firmly as he could, tasting every inch of them, tongue exploring all the hidden spaces of James’s mouth as James shivered sweetly and opened up for him.  
  
“I do like you,” he said between kisses, “and this is good,” and James smiled into the next touch of lips and then surprised him with a hand at the back of his head and a nudge down into the pillows, so they ended up with James lying atop him, hand under his head, intoxicating intimate support.  
  
James kissed him slowly, inch by inch: lips, throat, collarbone, chest. The faintly ticklish spot just above Michael’s navel; then, before he could do more than squirm in protest, the beginning trail of hair beneath it. These were kisses with unhurried intent, as if James were making a study of Michael’s body, maps of some glorious exotic land, simmering heat and leisurely cartography, memorizing each line and dip and flat expanse. Freckled fingertips adventured up one thigh, curious and broad and kind against his skin; Michael heard himself gasp.  
  
James paused to breathe a kiss over his hip-bone, feather-light and nevertheless spreading all the way to his heart. “Good?”  
  
“Yes—!” Michael said, a bit desperately, because if James wasn’t convinced and subsequently stopped then he might in fact explode from pent-up desire. “James, I—yes, please, _yes_ —”  
  
James kissed him again. “All right. You want me to…you want me inside you? Sorry, sorry, I don’t know the right words for this, you’d think I would, being a writer, but—”  
  
“Yes,” Michael said again, because that was just about the only word left in his vocabulary when it came to James. “Yes. I very much want you inside me, James, please.”  
  
“Okay. Where’s the—ah, here…” The faint sound of a bottle-top, the slick sounds of lotion, and a tiny amused note in the Highland gales. “This may be a bit much. It came out kind of quickly. Sorry about your sheet.”  
  
“The sheet doesn’t mind. Here—” He caught James’s wrist, pulled the hand down between his spread legs, knowing he was being utterly shameless, knowing also that James wouldn’t care. “Touch me. _Please_.”  
  
The world hung poised in its spin for a moment, as James did. “Like this?”  
  
“That—” One attentive fingertip stopped tracing the rim and eased a fraction inside, and Michael forgot his words all over again. “Oh god—”  
  
“More?”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
“I…” James hesitated, met his gaze, blue-black tides washed in night. “Please tell me if anything’s not—if it’s not feeling—I don’t want to hurt you.”  
  
Michael looked up at him, and said, “You won’t,” and knew that the sentence was unerringly true.  
  
James bit his lip, even while the fingertip stroked gently, rubbing over yearning muscles, setting each nerve ending alight. “What if I do something wrong?”  
  
“You— _oh_ —I’ll tell you.” He needed to say so. James needed to hear it. “I promise. I’ll tell you if it’s not—but it _is_ , right now, this is good, please trust me.”  
  
“Well,” James said after a moment, and Michael could hear the smile in that voice, unexpected spice through rich dark cocoa, “I do.” And there was more wetness, smooth slippery presence against his skin, and the pressure of that finger sliding in, joined by another, working him open, James’s touch inside him the way he’d been craving, and he nearly came undone on the spot, just thinking that thought and feeling the slide and twist of that hand.  
  
James clearly felt the shudder that ran through him; the fingers paused. “No,” Michael said frantically, “no, please, James, don’t stop, oh fuck don’t stop,” and James laughed, quick and weightless and pleased with him. The fingers slid out, repositioned, pushed back in; he heard himself groan, body yielding and loosening and welcoming whatever James wanted to do.  
  
James seemed to be considering this response, and then shifted the hand slightly, and pressed upwards, testing. Michael caught his breath, because it was _almost_ there, right on the edge of that electric spot, just a millimeter over—  
  
James paused again, eyebrows tugging together, fingers immobile; Michael actually swore out loud, entire body shaking with frustration, so close he hurt with it. James blinked. “You—said you’d tell me—”  
  
“I—yes, sorry, sorry, you were—that was—so close, just—”  
  
“Oh. So…close, you said?” Back in motion, finding the previous angle—Michael practically sobbed at the combination of relief and yearning—and then adjusting. Fractionally. The _right_ fraction.  
  
The lightning struck and collided around him. “Oh,” James observed again, sounding delighted; Michael lay there gasping for air, hips lifting as those writer’s fingers danced across that spot again and again, ceaseless caresses of sweet shocky ecstasy. His cock, untouched, rubbed along his stomach; it throbbed with a distant kind of heavy ache.  
  
“Hmm,” James said, and leaned down and licked him, tongue sweeping over the sticky mess at the tip; Michael tried to scream, had no air left, and just rocked his hips up into that relentless hand, nearly delirious with it.  
  
James was saying his name, he could hear it, scattered syllables between breaths. “Michael—you—I could do this, for you—or we could—you said you wanted me inside you and I—”  
  
“Oh god,” Michael said, and reached for him, blindly, hands curling around sturdy biceps. “Yes, _yes_ , please, but _now_ , right now, because if you touch me one more time I’m going to—and I want you in me first, I want you to fuck me—”  
  
James’s eyes went enormous. Michael, through all the waves of euphoria, remembered with sharp clarity that James wasn’t used to hearing those words, might’ve heard them under less wonderful circumstances, rearranged and directed at himself. The thought was a sobering bit of flotsam among the flood, and helpful timing, too.  
  
“Sorry,” he managed, panting, “sorry, I just—sort of—I want you, this is good, we’re good, you’re incredible, I’m sorry, I’m not exactly—words—thinking—”  
  
“Coherent?”  
  
“See…you are perfect…you even know all my…y’know…” He waved a hand limply against the mattress. “Words.”  
  
And James burst out laughing, fingers continually teasing sparkles through his body, eyes bright and happy and glowing down at him. “Perfect, honestly…you ought to be the writer, you see everything that isn’t there…you’re brilliant. I want you. I want to…words, you said…so I think my line is, I’d like to fuck you now?”  
  
“Oh god,” Michael said, and his cock jumped, smearing wetness over his stomach. Those words, in that voice. Leather and burnt sugar and sin. Spice and whiskey and Highland-sunset erotica.  
  
“I can do that for you,” James whispered, words for them both; and then the fingers slid away as James kissed him once more time.  
  
The first push was shockingly intense, pressure blunt and insistent at the opening of his body; he tried to breathe, muscles struggling to accommodate the intrusion. But James had been thorough in preparing him, and paused now, braced on one arm, the other tracing the line of Michael’s jaw. “All right?”  
  
“Very all right,” he panted, and lifted legs, spread them a bit wider, tried to beckon James in. “Please.”  
  
Blue eyes scrutinized his face, and Michael, lying there on his back with James gazing down at him, had never felt more desired, more cared for, more completely certain that he wanted to give James this, to give James everything.  
  
“If you’re sure,” James said, and Michael nodded, and then reached for him, put hands in all that hair the way he’d been wanting to earlier, and murmured into those lips, “I want you.”  
  
So James moved. And Michael heard himself moan, with relief, at the fullness, at that thick length gliding inside him, all the way as James sank home, buried so deeply in himself.  
  
“Michael,” James was saying, over and over; he got his eyes open—when had he closed them?—and said “ _Yes_ ,” and the ocean-wave eyes lit up at the assurance.  
  
James plainly meant to be gentle, treating him as if he were precious and breakable and worthy of reverence, each motion controlled and tender; Michael panted, “You won’t hurt me, James, you won’t, come here,” and slid hands along his waist, his hips, and guided the motion, bringing them together faster, harder, again and again. James seemed to get the idea, and even more so; one hand caught Michael’s right leg and pushed it up, obviously recalling what Michael’d done with him. The angle changed, just enough.  
  
“Oh god—”  
  
“Oh, _that_ —”  
  
The peak was coming, he could feel it, teetering on the brink of the supernova; he grabbed James, pulled him close, needing to feel him everywhere; James kissed him, uncoordinated and panting, and Michael’s hands bit down on his waist: clumsy support and desperate need all in one.  
  
James said his name, astonished and awed and sounding like a yes, and then tensed all over, and Michael felt him come, felt the hot wet flood of it over that exact tingling spot inside him, and that sent him flying too, and the world went white and blank and brilliant.  
  
He flung arms around James, holding on as the lightning ebbed. James breathed out, and in, and kissed him, nuzzled little gestures into Michael’s hair, over his temple.  
  
There was a question in all the gentle affection; Michael whispered, “That was wonderful,” and felt the smile along his ear. “Thought so. Maybe. You seemed happy.”  
  
“Very. You—was that all right, for you?”  
  
And James smiled again. Met his eyes; ran a hand over his chest, appreciative, fond, exhausted. “Yes. Very.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“Mmm. Michael…if you wanted that again…”  
  
“Only if you do.” He did, but wouldn’t ask, if the other half of that sentence contained any regret.  
  
“If you want that. Not all the time.” James put his head down on Michael’s shoulder. “I can’t—you’ve no idea how much effort it’s taking not to ask how much I hurt you…”’  
  
“Oh,” Michael said, shocked, and under that not shocked at all. He knew why James would think so, even as the knowing opened up a new hole in his chest.  
  
He put a finger under James’s chin; beckoned blue eyes up and into finding his. “You didn’t. I promise.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“You were careful. I told you I’d stop you if anything wasn’t good. Did I?”  
  
“…no?”  
  
“Well, then. Wonderful. Like you.” He rubbed his thumb over pale skin and the faintest emerging prickle of ginger stubble. It scraped roughly along his fingertip. “Did I…when we…earlier…did _I_ hurt _you_?”  
  
“No, you—”  
  
“And you’d’ve told me. If I had.”  
  
“Of course yes—!”  
  
He waited, letting that one hang in the air; James sighed, but was smiling now. Victory over the demons. For today, and making the next battle just a little easier, too. “All right. Yes. I see your point. Sometimes, then. If you want me to…practice more.”  
  
“All you want,” Michael said, and kissed him, right where his thumb’d been exploring, and James ran a foot along Michael’s ankle, playful again, and nibbled his ear.  
  
They fell asleep together, weary and comfortable, to the purr of the rain.  
  
He woke the following morning to ghostly damp sunshine and James curled into his arms, breathing softly into his shoulder. They’d fallen asleep face to face, legs tangled; sometime in the night he must’ve rolled onto his back, but he’d brought James with him, and they’d stayed folded into the embrace.  
  
His body ached somewhat, unaccustomed stretching and employment of muscles. But it was a splendid kind of ache, soul-deep and satisfying and quietly thrilling. And James had slept with him, slept in his arms, the whole night through.  
  
Amused, he realized that he could feel those toes brushing his ankles, and the mischievous tap of waving hair along his chin: James was, after all, a good amount shorter than himself. Michael’d never especially been turned on by height differences before, but all at once he was completely certain he’d forever be aroused by the way James tipped that head back to look at him, the fit of those solid muscles tucked in under his arm, the pocket-sized warmth and boundless compassion.  
  
He breathed in the scent and a few strands of that hair, inadvertently. Thought, I want to wake up just like this every morning.  
  
He wondered whether James felt the same. Hoped so. Hoped to see an answering smile in blue eyes, heat kindling along the ocean floor.  
  
He knew that might not be the case. He’d seen James flinch at unanticipated touches, avoid crowds, hide from attention. He wanted to believe that blue eyes would awaken and feel only safety, surety, in his arms; understood that it was just that: wanting to believe.  
  
James had been hurt very badly, a fact even if the details remained obscure. And as much as Michael wished that one magical night—and just maybe more magical nights and days and afternoons and mornings to come—could banish all the wounds, he knew that pain didn’t work that way.  
  
He held James a bit more closely, in the pearl-shimmer light of the new day. The light drifted in from the window, and painted aureate designs along the white-washed wall. The world waited, full of possibilities, suspended but not tipping over quite yet, content.  
  
Michael looked back at James, and found ocean-current eyes looking at him, full of unvoiced wonderment.  
  
In that moment, the only thing to do was simple, so he kissed James on the lips while the sunlight spilled down around them, pale liquid gold on the rumpled sheets and vivid quilt and entwined bodies.  
  
After, with James folded decidedly into his arms—a gesture of possessiveness that’d earned a laugh but no objection—he murmured happily, “Good morning,” and got the smile he’d been hoping for.  
  
“Good morning to you. I do enjoy waking up in your bed. Especially if you’re going to do that fantastic thing you’ve just done with your tongue. Can we do that again?”  
  
“Insatiable, are you? I’m not saying I mind, you understand.”  
  
“No—I mean yes, if you want, but…” James turned his head, pressed a kiss into Michael’s naked shoulder, lazy and satisfied. “Really I just want you to hold me. I feel…good, I think. Right here.”  
  
Michael kissed the top of his head, because it was within reach. “Good.”  
  
“I was thinking…” James wriggled around in his arms until they were face to face, eyes aligned; Michael leaned in to nudge their noses together, just because he could, and James smiled. “Hi.”  
  
“Hi, yourself. You were thinking? Can I ask?” He stroked a hand through dark hair, memorizing each loop as it slid through his fingers. “I enjoy waking up with you, too.”  
  
“Good to know. Can I…tell you something? It’s fine if you say no. You never asked for any confessions. You don’t have to.”  
  
“You gave me your umbrella in the rain,” Michael said, and held on more tightly. “I’m saying yes.”  
  
“My…oh. Oh. You—” James shook his head, but kissed him afterwards, a swift touch of lips to lips. “You. All right, then. I was…you know I’m kind of not the best with…with people. Being touched.”  
  
“I did notice.” Gently teasing, encouraging; he had a hand on James’s back. He rubbed hesitant muscles, careful soothing caresses, trying for reassurance, security, comfort if needed. “I didn’t want to push. If you didn’t want to tell me. Or anyone. But I am here, and I’d like to know, if you feel up to it.”  
  
“I’m better, now.” The blue eyes paused to flick over their bodies, twined together; and then there was a grin, quick and luminous. “Very much better. And up is a stupendous choice of word.”  
  
“What, again?”  
  
“I’m…I feel safe. With you.” Smiling. The sunbeam landed in his hair, and made friends with sociable strands. “I always want you. I thought maybe I could tell you. If you wanted to know.”  
  
“I do.” He’d never wanted anything more in his life. “Please.”  
  
“So,” James said, looking at him, gaze not calm but steady, “it was…well, it was a lot of things. And then one big thing. Not even that big, honestly, it probably wasn’t even important, he said it wasn’t and I was overreacting but I just couldn’t—”  
  
“James.” He’d heard that buried pronoun. Felt his heart clench at the sound.  
  
“…right. Sorry. I don’t—I’m extremely not good at telling this story. Ironic, I suppose. Oh—sorry. Interrupting it. I only…”  
  
“You don’t have to tell me,” Michael said, kissing him, the corner of one closed eye, the arch of a cheekbone, “if you don’t feel like you can. I’d like you to. You can. But you don’t have to.”  
  
He felt James take a deep breath, still lying cradled against him. “I want to. Just, ah, be honest, after. If you think I’m ridiculous, you can say. Rather that than have you pretend. All right?”  
  
He was already certain any agreement to that question was unnecessary; James wasn’t stupid, was a good judge of character and emotion, and was inhumanly forgiving to everyone except himself. If James remained this shaken, it wouldn’t be ridiculous.  
  
He said yes anyway, because it seemed to make those blue eyes feel better. This was worrying in a different way, but right now he had to know.  
  
“How much do you know? About what happened? About—this is going to sound horribly self-centered, but you said you’d read the books; did you, ah, see any of the news, about me?”  
  
“I…might’ve looked you up?” He tried to get past potential-stalker territory as quickly as possible. “I mean—I wasn’t, you know, trying to—I just wanted to know what—in case I could help, or…James, I’m sorry. I should’ve just waited.”  
  
“No, I’m not angry. I’d’ve likely done the same. And you said you were trying to help.”  
  
“Or punch someone in the face on your behalf, but yes?”  
  
“Thank you for that. It wasn’t his fault, though. Did the stories say that, at least? I only ever looked once, the day after it happened.”  
  
“They didn’t say much,” Michael admitted, honestly. “You were doing a signing, and there was a fan, and he—did he hurt you? They said—hospital, and…”  
  
“Hospital, yes.” Another sigh, this one more contemplative. “But it wasn’t his fault, it was mine. Or…mostly. I don’t know. I should start from the beginning, I think.”  
  
“Wherever you want.” And no words could convince him that James would be to blame; but it wasn’t the place for that argument.  
  
“It’ll make more sense…might sound like it won’t, but it will. Connections. Promise.”  
  
“I trust you,” Michael said, “you’re the writer,” and James laughed, though the ocean waves were unusually grave. Clouds ahead, at sea. No harbor in sight.  
  
Michael tightened arms around him. Life preservers. Just in case.  
  
“Where I grew up…” Fingers traced over his chest, telling the story too, in their own way. As always, he thought: the need for motion, gesturing, illustrating, spinning the world into the conversation. He lay still and let James touch him everywhere.  
  
“I told you I’m from Glasgow. True. Drumchapel. Council estates, government housing…we lived with my grandparents, me and my sister, she’s an actress now, doing fantastically. Anyway. We didn’t—when you’re a kid you don’t know it’s bad, you know?”  
  
A whole host of other untold stories lurked under that phrase. Michael could hear them, and wanted to ask, but bit his tongue. This was one specific story, and James would tell it his own way.  
  
“It was…not the worst area, but not the kind of place with neighborhood picnics and football leagues, either.” James sketched a heart this time, lopsided as his smile. Michael wanted to kiss him forever.  
  
“I’m sort of telling you my life story, but there’s a point to it, I swear. So…most people joined the navy, or got a job in construction, or didn’t get a job at all, and either way spent nights down the pub getting pissed and starting fights, nighttime entertainment, y’know, hit someone to see what he’s made of…and then there’s me. Short, pretty—I’m not saying I am, I mean, seriously, but people did say that, some people at least—I liked books and fantasy and I had a part-time job at a bakery and, well.”  
  
A gap in the narrative, a hand curling in on itself over Michael’s stomach. He bit his lip; felt both the lacuna and the gesture stab needles into his heart. Oh, James. No.  
  
“So…that happened…I mean, it could’ve been worse, I was…anyway, after that Gran wouldn’t let me out of the house, pretty much, until I was—”  
  
“Hang on, sorry, _what_ happened?”  
  
“Um.” James glanced down, then up through dark eyelashes, then said all in a rush, “I was walking home from work and it was getting dark and I got pushed into an alley and up against a wall and I don’t remember a lot because one of them hit me because I fought back, and after a while there was a cop, off-duty, just passing by, and he stepped in and stopped…what they were doing…and took me to the station instead of home or a hospital because I asked, because I couldn’t go home like that, it would’ve killed Gran to see me like—He gave me a blanket. And hot cocoa. We told her I got mugged. And she still wouldn’t let me out of the house alone until I was sixteen, after.”  
  
“How…” His voice was disintegrating. Splinters of horror. “How old…were you, when…”  
  
“Fourteen. And two months.” James found another smile, wry, full of old pain; walked the hand up to the back of Michael’s neck and set it there as if needing to hold on. Michael closed his eyes for a second, feeling all that courage; James added, “That two months is totally important, you know, very pertinent detail, I’m an excellent storyteller,” gently self-mocking, and Michael felt the tears burn behind his eyes.  
  
“Anyway, that was just to give you the shape. I was never very good at being close to people, after that, but I was all right—I was fine, I was coping, I went off to London and I got to be a writer and I even met someone, we’ll call him Ben, and he looked at me like he thought I was amazing, and he made me laugh.”  
  
He, Michael thought. That pronoun. He would be jealous of this person who’d reminded James how to laugh again, but he couldn’t be. First, because whatever else this Ben had done, he _had_ done that for James. And second because he had a terrible sense of dread at the pit of his stomach: from the inflection on that _he_ in the earlier mention, this story wouldn’t end well.  
  
“It wasn’t…we were happy, he liked me—he seemed to like me—he’d always tell me he understood about everything, he’d be there if I needed him, and he was so excited when the books started taking off, when I had signings and fans and publicity…he loved the idea of me being famous. Loved being with someone famous, I think.” James stopped, eyes very dark blue in the icy sun. Michael found his hand and lifted it and kissed it.  
  
“Back to the actual day…finally…I was doing that signing, publicity for the final First Class novel. There was a huge line, and they were pretty polite, but it was a lot of people, a lot of strangers, and not a very big room, and I was starting to feel sort of…I said I needed a break, and I got up, and I went out the back door, trying to catch my breath, and then…” James shivered, blinked; the sunbeam quivered around his eyes, and Michael recognized all at once that some of the shine wasn’t from the morning brightness.  
  
He reached over, carefully, and caught a few of the drops before they could fall. Murmured, “You’re all right, you’re safe, you said you felt safe with me, you know, and you _are_ ,” and felt the answering smile as if it’d brushed his heart.  
  
“I know. I’m…I do know. Thank you. So there’s me, outside and a little wobbly, and then there’s this huge guy, this bodybuilder type who’d been at the back of the signing line, just this massive hulk of a man, all in black, and I’d thought, hey, you get all sorts of fans, and that’s what the books’re about, really, accepting differences, except then he came running up to me shouting about how he’d seen me sneak out and he just knew it was an invitation and he’d been waiting to get me alone because we were going to be perfect together because I understood him and he wanted to make me see how happy I’d made him, and I didn’t have time to get away…I’m sorry, this is a terribly long story for something that’s not very interesting, isn’t it? But you did want to know…he picked me up, actually physically picked me up, and started, um. Licking my face.”  
  
Michael opened his mouth, shut it, found no words.  
  
James laughed, not from amusement, and eyes found a spot to drift to, beyond his shoulder. “I did say it was ridiculous. I know it is. I panicked—I mean I had an actual panic attack, hyperventilating, vertigo, on my knees in the alleyway, all of that. Worse than yesterday.”  
  
“ _Worse_ —”  
  
“Overreacting, it was. Ben said so, and he was right. You can laugh now.”  
  
“What…” That would’ve been an outraged demand, but he couldn’t get the volume out. His throat was trying to close up. Sheer disbelieving horror. “He…knew about your…about you…and he said you were overreacting…”  
  
“It’s not like anything cataclysmic happened.” Maintaining eye contact with some pillow-corner or dresser-edge, determinedly, with a shrug in the words. “He didn’t want to hurt me—I mean the excitable fan, not my ex—and security showed up right after that, and then they called an ambulance because I couldn’t breathe, and they took me to the emergency room. Ben came by and held my hand, and while he was doing that he told me that I should go back and finish the signing, that it wasn’t fair to all the fans, that I knew there was going to be a crowd and I should’ve had those reactions under control.”  
  
“What,” Michael said again. His heart contracted painfully in his chest.  
  
“He was right, but I couldn’t make myself go back. I could’ve rescheduled, maybe, but not then…I started crying because I couldn’t say the yes, and he said he’d always thought I was stronger than that, that the past was the past and I needed to get over it. I couldn’t stop crying, after that—if you heard anything about sedatives, that was why—and he told me he didn’t want to see me that way, and he left.”  
  
“Christ,” Michael got out, torn between the frantic need to hold James forever and the raging desire to find this Ben and tear every one of his limbs to pieces. The earlier dread had solidified into a white-hot sickening ball in his stomach. “You…that…he’s a complete bastard, James, you know that, right? I’m sorry, I know he’s your ex…your ex-something, but. That’s fucking emotional abuse. And he wasn’t right. About any of that. You _are_ strong. And you deserve better.”  
  
Not enough; not when that bruised-ocean gaze still wasn’t returning to his.  
  
“Please,” he tried, “please look at me, please listen, James, I’m here. You told me, and I’m here, and I’m saying that he was wrong. You were _hurt—_ not then, I mean, before. And it wasn’t your fault. Not either time. You had a panic attack. Which I’d say is pretty fucking rational, considering. You didn’t owe anyone anything. Not right then.” He paused in an attempt to see the other side; James wouldn’t believe him if he didn’t at least acknowledge potential objections.  
  
“Yes, you could have rescheduled. Later. Sent them free signed copies or something, I don’t know, I’m not a writer—but they’re your fans, they’d’ve understood. And you shouldn’t’ve had to worry about that from a hospital bed, for fuck’s sake, that’s just—that’s _wrong_. You were crying—you said you were—and he should have held you and told you he loved you and you’d figure it out together. That’s—what you _do_. When you love someone. _Please_ look at me.”  
  
There was a pause. Even the sunbeam hovered, weightlessly waiting.  
  
James took a shaky breath, and pulled his eyes away from whatever they’d been seeing, present time or past memory. Let out the exhale, and looked up, and his gaze met Michael’s.  
  
“I’m here,” Michael said, “I’m here, and I’m holding you.”  
  
And James let the tears fall, soundlessly, but started nodding through the deluge, and then leaned forward and kissed him, with lips that tasted like salt and sunshine, like the sweet ache of mending wounds, gaps stitched back together and beginning to close.  
  
“I left,” James said into the kiss, words tumbling into Michael’s mouth to be swallowed. “That’s the rest of the story. How I ended up here. I just—I told him, when they said I could go home, that I couldn’t go home with him. And he laughed and told me that I’d come back, that he’d be waiting, that I’d never feel safe out on my own with strangers. So I got on a train, and then I got on a bus, and then I ended up here. In the rain. Patrick and Ian took me in that first night, and I sort of just stayed put, just trying to breathe again, if I could ever remember how. And then you were here, and I did feel safe. With you.”  
  
“You’re spectacular,” Michael said, and kissed him deeply, hands tangling in his hair, cupping his head, holding him close. “Magnificent. I’m in awe. And I’ll keep you safe. Promise.”  
  
“You can’t—”  
  
“Yes, I can. Always. Or—no, that’s not exactly right, you can keep yourself safe, because you do, you know, you’re the one who came here, you left him—your ex—you were taking care of yourself before you ever met me. But if you’d let me…I’d like to help. I sort of like taking care of you.”  
  
He meant every word. He’d meant the words when he’d said: someone who loves you would want to be here. And I’m here. Holding you.  
  
“Yes,” James said, and Michael thought dizzily that those blue eyes could read his mind, knew exactly what he was thinking; of course they did, because James _was_ a fairy-tale, an intricate beautiful story of trials and bruises and villains and happy endings and true love. Here in his bed. In his arms.  
  
“Yes,” James said again, and the sun danced in its wintery sky, spilling light over them. “I would—I’d like that. I like you.”  
  
It wasn’t quite an _I love you_ ; James might not be ready. That was all right. James had heard him, including the unsaid words; he knew that was true, because they were audible in that Highland-sunrise answer, too.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Michael gets a phone call and needs to make a decision; James makes a decision, too. And there's a perfect place to say I love you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...there'll be one extra chapter. I couldn't resist the idea for the epilogue. :-)
> 
> Also, just fyi, I've had bits of this chapter written since I first started working on this prompt. I had a Plan. :-)

“We could go out,” Michael said, propped comfortably against the headboard of the bed, James tucked between his legs and happily naked under the quilt. “While there’s sunlight. We could go to the store, if you wanted, and we could come up with ideas for lunch…”  
  
“What?” James looked up from his notebook. The eyes returned from whatever fantasy realm they’d been inhabiting, refocusing; Michael wanted to kiss him. He’d discovered that he loved watching James work; loved the sudden pounce for pen and paper and the scribbles of ideas, the need to capture a line the way it sounded _right now_ in his head…  
  
James had blushed and tried to apologize, earlier, for being distracted. Michael _had_ kissed him, for that, and then found a Star Wars paperback to re-read. He didn’t want to hover over the creative inspiration.  
  
He had been sneaking little peeks at James, though. Blue eyes all intent. Pen rushing along paper. Even the hair was concentrating.  
  
Michael adored every inch of him.  
  
“Sorry,” James said again, “one more time? I can stop.”  
  
“Can you? I didn’t mean to interrupt.”  
  
“No, I got it down. The scene I had in my head. Store?”  
  
“Yes,” Michael concurred, and then said it all again, about shopping and cooking and trying out recipes together; James put his head on one side and suggested, “We can also buy actual lube,” and Michael said, “I love the way you think,” and then his mobile phone rang.  
  
They both stared around the bedroom. Michael finally figured out the source of the sound, dove for his discarded jeans, and scooped the phone out of the pile just as it stopped.  
  
He gazed at it, nonplussed. James raised an eyebrow.  
  
“Well, it’s not you,” Michael said, “or Ian, or Patrick…”  
  
“You’re not supposed to be in early, are you?”  
  
“Not as far as I know, and it’d say if it was Kevin…”  
  
The phone went off again, shrilling in his hand. Unknown number. He looked at James; got a shrug.  
  
He poked the screen. “Hello?”  
  
“Michael?”  
  
That voice. _That_ voice. A passionate bear-hug of a voice. Went with the energy and vision of the man.  
  
The man he’d loved.  
  
“Steve,” he said, and his voice sounded strange in his ears.  
  
James dropped the notebook.  
  
Michael plunged back across the bed to get an arm around him. James shook his head, but what that meant, Michael couldn’t tell.  
  
Steve was talking, over the distance. “…listen, Michael, don’t hang up. I know we left on—well, not the best terms we could’ve left on—I’m not asking you to come back because of that. I’m sorry about how it went, but that’s not why I’m calling.”  
  
“Why…are you…calling, again?”  
  
“Have you been keeping up with the reviews? The film notices?”  
  
“No…”  
  
“I’ve been trying to find you. Called your agent, called your landlady…I didn’t think you’d pick up if you knew it was me. This is Brad Pitt’s phone.”  
  
“…Brad Pitt.”  
  
James pulled up knees, under the quilt, and wrapped both arms around them. Defensive maneuvers. Protective shields. Made him look smaller, in Michael’s bed. The sunshine dwindled, passing behind a tactful cloud.  
  
“Right. He likes me. He likes you on camera. He wants to help us get another film into production, it’ll be great, I’ve got a script, we’ll have a real studio behind us, financing and a proper budget and international distribution, and everyone’s very impressed with you, and we want you on board. I want you on board.”  
  
“You…”  
  
“I said I wanted you. Because regardless of whatever we are or aren’t, you’re the best actor I’ve ever worked with. I said that. I’m being honest. Whatever comes next, it’ll be better with you.”  
  
Michael sat there holding the phone, one arm over James’s stiff shoulders. He felt numb. Bewildered. The blankness before impact. Meteors headed for the ground. Life wiped out and ready to start over.  
  
And oh god he wanted to say yes.  
  
“So,” Steve said, “what do you think? Come back to London? Back from where-the-fuck-ever you went? Where _are_ you, anyway?”  
  
“I’m…I…”  
  
“It’s not important. I can email you the script, you can see what you think, this character’s called Brandon, and—”’  
  
“Steve.”  
  
“What?”  
  
He didn’t have a sentence in mind. Just had to interrupt the ceaseless words.  
  
James wasn’t looking at him.  
  
“Michael…” Steve’s voice softened. Kinder. The way that voice had sounded before they’d kissed. Before Steve had apologized for not being able to love him in return. “Are you all right? I know we’re not—but I never meant to hurt you. And I care about you. I didn’t ever want you to leave in the middle of the fucking night without saying goodbye, so this is me asking, are you okay, and can I help?”  
  
“I…don’t know. I mean. I think so. I—thank you. For asking.” He tried to pull James closer. Leaned their heads together. James still didn’t look up, but accepted the closeness, the kiss to his forehead.  
  
“Steve, I—can I think about it? Please? At least today?”  
  
“You can have three days,” Steve said, “but that’s final, okay? I need to know. And you call me if you need to talk, all right? About anything. I’m here. Also tell me if my email didn’t go through, and please don’t tell me you blocked my email.”  
  
“No…I didn’t. Thank you.”  
  
“Okay, then,” Steve said, and hung up. The man never had liked wasting time, Michael recalled dimly, as the screen went dark.  
  
The impact was looming, but he set it aside. Other things took precedence. “James?”  
  
“That was him,” James said, voice utterly colorless. Michael didn’t know how to read that sound. “Your…Steve.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“He was asking you to come back?”  
  
“For a film project. Not for him.” He attempted kissing cold lips, leaning in, nipping plaintively at that generous mouth. James permitted the gesture, but without leaning in for more.  
  
“It’s not fair to ask yet, is it? What you want to do?”  
  
“I…don’t know what I’m going to do.” Answering the implied question, not the literal one; shying away from the phrasing, as all the want sank in at once.  
  
Too many wants. The sunlight emerged anew to gleam mockingly across the battered wood-plank floor.  
  
He _was_ an actor. He wanted that with every fiber of his being. He could tell those stories, breathe life into those characters, create new interpretations every day…  
  
He wanted James at his side, every day, just as badly. Wanted this life, blue eyes and bookshops and tentative tumbles into love, the rain and the colorful quilt and the place where he’d discovered his heart again. James had shown it to him.  
  
James had given him more than he’d ever dreamed of having.  
  
And he didn’t know, and he hated himself for it.  
  
He couldn’t ask James to come with him to London. To the noise and bustle of the city, to a life of film sets and location shooting and strangers all around, in a new neighborhood if James stayed home without him, at interminable hotels and press conferences and publicity events if James came along. The image swam before his eyes, churning his stomach: renewed trembling at the first of too many avid impatient touches or grips of a shoulder, skin going white, unable to stand or speak or breathe…  
  
No. He couldn’t ask that.  
  
He’d been silent too long; James was looking at him with uncannily perspicacious eyes. Reading his soul, perhaps; he’d not be surprised.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, without knowing precisely for what, only that he needed to apologize.  
  
“It’s all right.” James toyed with the fraying hem of the quilt, looping it through fingers. “If you need space…if you want to be alone…”  
  
“No! No, I don’t—I don’t know. I need to think. But I want you here. Please.”  
  
“It might be easier if I weren’t.”  
  
“It might be. But I don’t want it to be easy.” He put a hand over that busy one, interrupting the fretful flirtation with the quilt. James looked up, startled. “And I don’t want to lose you.”  
  
And James smiled—a fractured, broken-winged sort of smile, but present—and turned his hand, and wove Michael’s fingers into his.  
  
The day _wasn’t_ easy. It was endless. Eternal torment. Hell, he thought, standing in the kitchen regarding listless chicken and trying to find a spark of enjoyment regarding lunch and cooking for James. Damnation, when he glanced over and saw that bent dark head, all wavy hair and writerly focus, jotting down a thought, a phrase, a scene. The impossible choice. Everything he’d ever dreamed of, and to gain one half of his heart he’d have to give up the other.  
  
He tried making a list. He sat down and wrote Go and Stay on a piece of paper. Gazed at it for ten despairing minutes. Then crumpled it into a ball and launched it into the trash.  
  
James looked up from his own writing at the motion, eyes shadowy blue and worried for him, and Michael thought, stay.  
  
He checked his email. The script had arrived. He read the first two pages, and wished he hadn’t, because it was good, it was _so_ good, and he knew what he could do with the character already, it’d be challenging and demanding and heartrending and magnificent, and he thought, go.  
  
Time for his shift at the pub, and it might be the last shift, if he left, and that hurt as well. Those crumpled-paper creases, lining his heart.  
  
He walked with James down the street, hand in hand. He made drinks. He served drinks. He laughed with Patrick and Ian when they teased Hugh about coming back to work early to avoid baby-diaper duty. He and James had bought a set of baby books online; those should be arriving soon, he thought, at Hugh’s front door. From the two of them.  
  
The night wore on, inexorable and chilly. And he continued to not know. Got more cold with every passing second. Black icicles and frozen skies.  
  
How could he _not_ know? Shouldn’t he have some answer to the question, if someone asked what he wanted most in life?  
  
But he had two answers. And his heart was coming apart between them.  
  
James didn’t push. Didn’t ask. Curled up in his usual spot at the end of the bar, noted the occasional thought in the ever-present much-worn notebook, nibbled on his lower lip more often than usual. It’d be red and raw by the end of the night, Michael thought, and the idea sliced cruel thin ribbons along the surface of his heart, peeling away layers.  
  
Under pretense of bringing another drink, he paused at the end of the bar. Put a hand out, lifted James’s chin, kissed him softly. Touched an index finger to that wounded lip, after: please.  
  
James dropped his gaze momentarily, but nodded, and looked back up, and summoned a half-smile from the night. The night got just a fraction less icy, with that.  
  
They walked home without speaking, holding each other against the bitter rising wind. Lights twinkled, but not many; most shops were shut, so late. Darkened windows, hollow eyes.  
  
They slid into bed, naked under the protection of the sheets; Michael folded his arms around James, and James settled against him. Whispered, “if you want to,” over his bare chest, and Michael, surprised, whispered back, “do you?” He’d not wanted to make demands.  
  
“I’m not trying to persuade you,” James said, very quietly, in the dark. “Not like this. But I do want you. Whatever you decide—I don’t want to miss a single minute with you.”  
  
“I want you,” Michael breathed, “yes,” and thought, I love you, I love you, and you’ve never said it, what if you can never say it, and what if I don’t care and this is enough…  
  
They made love slowly, tenderly, not drawn out but with unhurried gentleness born from the exhaustion of the day, the drain of that heavy unmade choice, the need for shared safe harbor against the weight. James came first, panting, shuddering, climax pulsing out over Michael’s hand; Michael, kneeling above him as he lay sprawled on the sheets, took his own length in a firm grip and stroked roughly, those final pulls, so close. James lifted a hand, uncoordinated in the wake of release, and curled fingers around Michael’s tightening shaft, watching with desire-flooded eyes, all black and blue in the night. Michael moved his own hand, set it _over_ James’s, and worked his cock harder, faster, using both their hands, hearing the small gasp, seeing James moan and shiver and lick those tempting lips at the hint of command…  
  
He came abruptly, white jets of orgasm spurting over James’s chest, throat, chin, and yes, those lips, which James licked again, dreamily, eyes unfocused. Michael very nearly had a second orgasm at that, but instead fumbled for tissues and water and cleaned them both up, hands very careful on pale freckle-splashed skin.  
  
When he finished, James reached for him, both arms; Michael got back into bed, pulled the blankets up—barriers against the encroaching brittle weather—and held him, and kissed him, and nuzzled persistently behind an earlobe until James made a grumbling sound and said “I’m fine, that was fantastic, I’m wonderful, you’re wonderful,” and Michael, satisfied, said, “Go to sleep,” and promptly did himself, the second he thought James had listened.  
  
He woke up, in the morning, with an arm over James’s waist and unruly hair tickling his chin, and he knew that he wanted that feeling for all the days to come.  
  
James stirred, yawned, opened sleepy-hyacinth eyes to blink at him. “Michael.”  
  
“Morning.” He ran both hands over all the freckles, the expanses of offered skin, needing to touch. “Breakfast?”  
  
“Mmm,” James said, yawning again, hair in his eyes, chin digging into Michael’s chest with the tilt to an upright position. This hurt. And Michael made his decision.  
  
Just like that. Not easy, no. But he knew. And he knew it was right.  
  
“Coffee,” James inquired hopefully, and Michael kissed him and promised “Yes,” and set about making a white-chocolate peppermint fantasia as rapidly as possible, and James tried to kiss him back but was sufficiently drowsy, pre-caffeine, to only land on the corner of his mouth.  
  
He guessed that James knew he’d made a choice. Could tell in the sudden slackening of tension, the recaptured ease between them, the flip of pancakes and the sizzle of bacon. James opted not to query him about it, which Michael appreciated; but he caught blue eyes tracking his movements, no doubt recognizing the odd effervescent lightness that came with certainty.  
  
He’d chosen. He would be happy. He knew he would be.  
  
He felt inexpressibly freed by that knowledge. Too much to contain, all at once; he grabbed James’s hand, as it finished stealing the last bite of bacon. “Want to go somewhere?”  
  
James didn’t reclaim the hand, but did regard this enthusiasm with a skeptical eyebrow. “Where?”  
  
“On a walk?” He’d only just had the idea, but it was a good one. James would like the fairy cottage; he knew it. James was a writer, enjoyed fantasy and mystery and secrets. And Michael wanted to share this secret; wanted blue eyes to feel the serenity, the enchantment.  
  
The cottage, and the village, had been a refuge for him. James would understand. Would see that behind his decision.  
  
“All right,” James said, somewhat bemused but willing, and shuffled into jeans, sweater, coat, scarf. Michael found very recognizable fingerless gloves lying on the sofa; felt his heart twirl briefly, and came over and held them out.  
  
“Thank you. Did you have someplace in mind, or are we just wandering?”  
  
“Definitely someplace. Are you warm enough?”  
  
“I will be,” James said, “if you hold my hand,” and the tone was teasing, but there was uncertainty behind all the blue, strain under the waves.  
  
“Always,” Michael said, and took now-gloved fingers in his. “You can keep me warm, too.”  
  
They wound their way down the street, through the crisp-toothed breeze and frosty sunlight. Little snowdrift piles of leaves sat along the pavement, glinting the last days of autumn at them, copper and brown and scarlet and gold. A few passersby nodded at them—recognizing Michael, perhaps, from the pub, or James from book dust-jackets or also the pub—but no one approached; the friendliness suffused the air, and that was enough.  
  
He steered James out of the more-travelled areas, onto one of the wooded paths; one of his favorites for jogging, and one that led provocatively up the hill in crooked leafy twists and turns. James lifted another eyebrow at him. “Exploring?”  
  
“I wanted to show you something. One of my favorite places. I found it when I was out running…”  
  
“Hmm.” James kicked a small round path-pebble with the toe of his boot. It bounced happily ahead, and waited for them to catch up and play some more. “Running. I do yoga.”  
  
“You do yoga?”  
  
“I do.” With a grin, brighter than the sunbeams through the fading leaves. “Weren’t you impressed by my flexibility? Remind me to show you some advanced positions.”  
  
“Yes please,” Michael said immediately, and James laughed, and flicked the pebble again. “I also like football, and I own a kilt, somewhere. And now you know pretty much all the random facts about me.”  
  
He’d never stop wanting to learn more. “…kilt?”  
  
“Oh yes,” James said, and put an arm around his waist. “Very authentic, too. Traditional.”  
  
“Does that mean you won’t be wearing—”  
  
“Yes. Where…ah, where _are_ we going? Because—”  
  
“Oh, sorry, are you tired? Or—”  
  
“No, and also no, I’m not afraid you’re taking me out into the woods to reenact a horror movie. But this looks familiar.”  
  
“Good? And…there’s this place…it’s kind of…I don’t know. I always imagined there’d be a story about it. Fairies, or dryads, or…I don’t know if anyone lives there, but—what?”  
  
“Nothing, nothing, go on…you mean the Conan Doyle house, right? Or, not his actual place, that got demolished seventy years ago, but the housekeeper’s cottage?”  
  
“…how’d you know that?”  
  
“There is a story about it,” James said, smiling, and matched their steps together, over the crunching leaves, the rich dark earth. “I’ll tell you, if you want. When we get there.”  
  
“So you’ve been there?”  
  
“Mm, yes…not as much lately, though…” James hopped neatly over a fallen branch. Then came back and fit himself under Michael’s arm again. “I’ve had other distractions.”  
  
“Good ones, I hope,” Michael said, as they wandered up the hill through the fading late-autumn embers, and saw the emphatic nod.  
  
The walk was a fairly long one, enough for a decent workout at a jog, though not distressingly strenuous; Michael did wonder momentarily whether the shorter legs at his side would get tired, but James kept up with no apparent effort, navigating tumbled rocks and leaf-eddies with abandon. Potentially this was related to the yoga; potentially, though, it was just James enjoying the world, and the world appreciating being enjoyed.  
  
The sun shone forcefully down on his head. It approved of him watching James.  
  
They popped out of the slim pale ring of tree-trunks, and into the clearing. As ever, it shimmered: gilt-dust and fairy-lace and legends in the air. Thatched roof and ivy-woven walls. The grass bent welcomingly beneath boots.  
  
James was smiling, small and peculiar, and glanced up when Michael waved a hand. “So…what do you think?”  
  
“I like it,” James said, “but, then, I’ve always liked it. Feels like…peace and potential.”  
  
“Like it’s waiting for something to happen.”  
  
“For the fairies to come home.” James flashed a grin at him. “That is the story, or part of it. Brownies, in this cottage…”  
  
“Brownies,” Michael echoed, and his spare hand, the one not looped over a shorter shoulder, snuck into his coat pocket and closed around a crinkle of paper there. He’d all but forgotten.  
  
Ask for what you want, it’d said. Anything.  
  
“Domestic fairies? Home and hearth and all that? They like milk? Aren’t you Irish?”  
  
“Only half,” Michael said, not as indignantly as he might’ve, “and I do know what brownies are. It is a fairy cottage, then? Not just Conan Doyle’s housekeeper’s place?”  
  
James laughed. “It can’t be both? Yes, though. A love story…did you ever explore properly?”  
  
“The house?” They’d made it nearly to the front door, an arch of antique wooden mystery. There was a rose carved into the knob, delicate tracing through metal; Michael felt vaguely uneasy, closer than he’d ever been. He wasn’t sure the fairies would approve of two strange men turning up on their front porch.  
  
“Ah,” he tried, as James ran a fingertip over the wood, the crumbling white wall beside it, “someone might, y’know, actually live here…I’ve seen tire tracks…should we…”  
  
“Go? Don’t be ridiculous. You brought me here. I think we should look for magic, don’t you?”  
  
“James—”  
  
“Besides,” James said, “I have a key,” and put it in the keyhole and swung the door open and beckoned, all while Michael was standing there trying to believe his own eyes.  
  
“I mean…” A hint of nervousness, now, in the Highland-horizon accent. “It’s not my place, I’m only renting, but, um, you wanted to know whether anyone lived here, and I do, I thought maybe I could write here, again, something new, something about the legend, maybe, I’ve been trying…Michael?”  
  
“… _you_ live here.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“You live _here_.”  
  
“Ah…yes, temporarily? Do you want to come in?” James was looking at him with growing apprehension. “Maybe I should’ve told you, but I didn’t realize where we were going at first, and then I thought you might not mind the surprise… _please_ come in, sit down, sorry. D’you want tea?”  
  
Michael let himself be pushed through the low doorway and into the single airy room. Too much surprise for any resistance. James and fairies and his secret haven all collided in his head. Sunshine and astonishment.  
  
The cottage was full of sunshine as well. Everywhere he looked, as if gold were being born out of the honeyed-oak floorboards, the pots and pans in the kitchen corner, the rumpled blankets on the sofa-bed, the desk under the window, spilling over with pens and paper and notes, scribbled and crossed-out and underlined words. Even the modern-day laptop wasn’t incongruous. It sat to one side and beamed just as brightly as the rest.  
  
“Tea?” James reached up to tap his cheek, a little worriedly. “Michael?”  
  
“ _Are_ you magical?”  
  
“Me? Not as far as I know. I’m only, well, me. Scared of people, of being too close…I wanted to invite you up here. So many times. I just couldn’t…”  
  
“I know,” Michael said, because he did, because he understood: this was a last refuge, secluded and sweet. Books and air and dreams on paper, no cruel hands or words like blows.  
  
This _had_ been a last refuge. James had opened the door and let him in.  
  
James’s hand had remained cradling his face, warm over his temple, his cheek. He put his own over it, through a flickering sun-streak. “Are you all right?”  
  
Those eyes were very blue, meeting his. “Yes. I like seeing you here.”  
  
“I like being here. Tea? I can help.”  
  
“You don’t have to,” James said, but bumped shoulders with him companionably when Michael went looking for milk in the refrigerator, and hooked their feet together under the tiny table after they sat down. James started to reach for the kettle and pour; Michael gave him a look, and did it himself, and added extra sugar to the cup he handed over.  
  
“Thank you,” James said, and took a sip. “Perfect. How’d you know?”  
  
“I guessed. You…live here.”  
  
“I thought we established that.”  
  
“No, I mean…” He stopped. Looked at James, all rare-jewel eyes and exotic freckles, a stray bit of extraordinariness wandering into the world. Into Michael’s life. Changing it forever. For good.  
  
“You belong here, sort of,” he finished, and took a sip of his own tea. Almost too hot; but the flavor was rich and full and robust along his tongue. Comforting, somehow. Solid. Real. “You were…writing, you said? About the legend? The…brownies?”  
  
“I was, yes.” James fiddled with his tea, wrapping fingers around it, seeking warmth; the depthless sapphires were unsure, Michael realized suddenly. Trepidatious. “Trying to write would be more accurate. I don’t know…I feel like I’ve lost—I haven’t been able to get words out properly since—well, I told you. Since everything. I keep second-guessing all my sentences. Except…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Except when I’m around you. Yesterday, in bed…earlier in the pub…the words just sounded right.” James looked at his own hands, coiled around the tea as if one or both of them needed the support. Then uncoiled one, and reached for Michael’s. “Thank you for that.”  
  
“I didn’t do anything.”  
  
“You were here.” That smile lit up the furthest corners of the room. There hadn’t been any shadows, but if there’d been, they would’ve been chased away. “That’s enough, maybe. You being here. You should’ve seen some of those terrible first-draft sentences…or no you shouldn’t, you’d never respect me as an author again…I left the window open, once, by accident, and some of my notes blew out. I never did find them. I think it was the fairies telling me to get out of here and find you.”  
  
The paper rustled in Michael’s pocket again, when he leaned forward. Of course, he thought. Of course. And it _was_ magic. Had to be.  
  
“James,” he said, “I want to be here. You said it was a love story?”  
  
“Oh…from everything I’ve been able to find out, yes.” The hand not holding his made a sweeping gesture: encompassing the tidy line of books along one wall. “Folklore, mythology, local history…this used to be a vicar’s cottage, centuries ago. And he lived alone, but he kept noticing odd things, the floor being swept, ancient gold coins turning up under the floorboards when he needed money, the dishes washed when he knew he’d not done them…”  
  
“Brownies?”  
  
“Just one, really. She was all alone here, the last one who’d stayed when the medieval tenants moved out…she was very lonely, and the vicar was young and compassionate and also rather lonely out here with no close companions…I’m sorry, you didn’t actually ask, did you—”  
  
“I’m asking. Tell me.”  
  
“Well…he stays up one night, and he sees her, and of course as a man of the Church he shouldn’t believe in fairies, but she’s so lovely, and so good to him, and so sad, and right in front of his eyes; so he starts doing little things, leaving out bread and milk the way his granny used to, reading aloud in the evenings, leaving a note, finally, thanking her and inviting her to tea…”  
  
“I like him,” Michael said, and very deliberately refilled James’s teacup; got a flash of luminescent smile. “How does it end?”  
  
“There’re a few versions. It changes, depending on who’s telling it, and to whom.” That spiced-whiskey voice burnished every word into a marvel. “In one, the brownie falls desperately in love with the vicar, and he loves her in return, but he’s promised to the Church, and he has too much integrity to break his vows. He tells her he can’t be with her; he dies, eventually, and she lives with her grief, because, like all fairies, she’s immortal.”  
  
“I…don’t like that one.”  
  
“No, neither do I.” James was playing with the new tea, nudging it back and forth across the table, restless heat. “There’s another…he does break his vows to be with her, and she gives up her immortality to be with him. They live out a normal lifespan, human, and they die hand in hand.”  
  
“I like that one better.” He put out a hand, resting it halfway between them, palm up. After a second, James took it.  
  
“There’s one more. Same as the second one, except, as they’re dying, either God looks down or the fairies look up at them, and whichever eternal being you’d like is moved by their love and devotion to grant the two of them eternal life. In fairyland, possibly, or in heaven. Together, always, anyway.”  
  
Michael curled his fingers around the freckled ones in his, feeling the lingering heat from the cup. “I think that one’s my favorite.”  
  
“Mine, too.” James took a deep breath, tightened his grip on Michael’s hand. Met Michael’s eyes, across the faded gold-blooming wood of the kitchen table. “I’m not magical. I can cook, maybe; I can write, or I think I can. I can’t bring you fairy gold or—or the life you want that isn’t here. I’ll always be nervous, I think, around crowds. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come with you to a film premiere; I’d try, but I can’t promise. I can tell you that I love you. I don’t know if that changes anything. And I’m not asking you to make a decision because of it.”  
  
“James—”  
  
“I just wanted to tell you. I feel like I’m always smiling around you, you make me believe in happy endings again, and I’m in love with you.”  
  
“Oh,” Michael said, as his heart threatened to crack and overflow with emotion, too much to contain. A sense of sheer _rightness_ , permeating the world. Happiness, and the scent of tea, with extra sugar, in the air. “Oh. James. Yes. I love you too.”  
  
“You don’t have to say it just because I—”  
  
“I’m not!”  
  
“Oh,” James said, extremely wide-eyed with surprise, and Michael laughed, grabbed both his hands, narrowly avoided knocking over the listening teacups, and went on, “I’m not just saying it because, I’m saying it because I want to, because I’ve wanted to ever since—since I met you, I think. When you smiled at me in the rain. I’m in love with you. And that changes everything, and it doesn’t change anything, because I’d already decided. I want to be here for you. That’s what I want.”  
  
James’s eyes had changed throughout his speech, still huge but reflecting myriad dazzling emotions: hope, disbelieving tentative desire, concern, resolve.  
  
Concern?  
  
“James?”  
  
“You love me?”  
  
“Completely yes.”  
  
“And I love you.”  
  
“You did just say so. Is everything—are you all right? Did I—”  
  
“No, I’m fine, I’m—” James stopped, breathed out, smiled just a little. “I am fine. Or at least more than I’ve ever been, I think. With you. And I can’t let you do this. Give this up for me. Your dream. I—”  
  
“James, no—and you’re not letting me, it’s my choice, I’m choosing you—”  
  
“—yes, so if you mean it, if you’ll be here for me, then I’ll go wherever you ask, for you. We’ll figure this out together. I love you.”  
  
Michael sat there in the sunlit fantastical room, the taste of tea and autumn on his lips, and stared.  
  
“Choices,” James said, and squeezed his hands. “You said. This is mine. You’re mine.”  
  
“James,” Michael said, squeezing back. The sunbeams fell over their joined hands. Eager. Inviting. “You would…you’d want to…”  
  
“We’ll make it work. I can come back to London with you. Nothing too public—but if we found a flat, a house, someplace that’s ours, someplace I can stay home and write—”  
  
“A hotel suite when we’re filming on location, you can come with me—if you want—I’ll ask for that—”  
  
“I can write anywhere, if I have to, and—”  
  
“And we’ll keep this place.” The cozy old wood glowed, hearing that. “We can always come back here. Anytime we need an escape—”  
  
“—or just want to visit Ian and Patrick?” James’s eyes were dancing. Fearless elation in the waves. That emotion poured itself directly into Michael’s heart, and found a home there.  
  
“Yes,” he said, and got up as James did the same, coming to meet him around the curve of the breakfast table. James held out both hands; Michael took them and used them to draw him closer, arms going around him in the middle of the wide airy room, the leaping sunshine, the love story.  
  
“We’ll do this,” he said, “we can do this together, I love you so much,” and James laughed and put both arms around Michael’s neck, fingers tangling in his hair. Told him, “I love you just as much, and yes, _yes_ , we can.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best day of Michael's life. Ever. (Also the best day of James's, for related reasons.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! It's been fun. <3

_epilogue: some time later_  
  
The Academy Awards. The Oscars. The biggest moment of—well, not of his life. That title would always belong to a certain golden afternoon in an enchanted cottage with the taste of James’s kisses on his lips. But it _was_ a big night, and Michael shifted awkwardly in his seat. The chair really wasn’t as comfortable as it ought to be, considering.  
  
Steve leaned in toward him. “Nervous?”  
  
“No,” Michael said, because he wasn’t; he didn’t expect to win, had been shocked just to be nominated. He’d known it was a good film—they all had—but the official recognition, for such a brutal and uncompromising story, and for him in particular…  
  
He was honored simply to be there. Trite, yes. But also true.  
  
He wriggled once more, ideally unobtrusively, in the too-short chair. It mocked his efforts.  
  
Maybe it wasn’t the chair. Maybe it was that other fact, the missing presence at his side. The chair’d doubtless behave for James.  
  
James wasn’t far, of course. Back at the hotel, almost certainly focused on the television. Most likely curled up with vanilla-bean-and-blueberry coffee and a blanket, settled and comfortable and snug in their giant celebratory bed, cheering him on; he’d said that was the plan, when Michael’d kissed him and handed him the berry-scented mug before leaving. James believed he’d win, for some inexplicable reason; but then James was firmly convinced that Michael could do anything, even in the face of rational arguments about first-time nominations and their formidable fellow honorees.  
  
James was an optimist. Michael was learning that about him; not a naïve optimist, no, but someone who knew about pain and dark pasts and bruises, and who nevertheless looked at the universe with limitless joy, seeing only possibilities.  
  
James had remembered the names of all the personal assistants and interns on the film. Hadn’t interacted much with them, of course, but they’d all gotten used to Michael wanting to check in, running back to the provided accommodations for lunch between shots, and gradually James’d been persuaded to come out a time or two for dinner. Had even signed autographs, looking adorably flustered when asked. Had admitted, flushing pink over all the freckles, that, yes, he was working on something new.  
  
The cast and crew, and even the media, had been astonishingly kind. There’d been a few stories, a few interviews with the two of them together; they weren’t hiding, and weren’t ashamed. But James needed to feel secure, needed privacy, and the world seemed inclined to respect that for now. Michael was grateful, and promised himself to never take the consideration for granted.  
  
James and Steve had gotten on rather well. He felt that he ought to be worried about this, especially when they started texting each other. He was very certain they’d conspired to send him home early the day he’d filmed his grueling in-role on-camera emotional collapse. James had wrapped both arms and legs around him in bed, kissed him softly, and, as Michael discovered the next afternoon, shut off his alarm.  
  
Steve hadn’t even been angry. Collusion. Conspiracy. Michael’d sighed, and let them fuss over him.  
  
He missed James and that cozy hotel room and the taste of blueberries. The stiffness of his suit collar poked at his neck.  
  
But he knew better than to ask; knew that this was the compromise. James still flinched at crowds, and grew anxious among strangers, retreating into quietness and tangible distance. Michael tried to hold him, every time. Had sat with him in the hotel room, arm around tense shoulders, after they’d arrived in Los Angeles, after the mass of humanity streaming through the airport, hordes jostling them through the terminals. They’d had the studio jet, but they’d had to make their way out to meet their driver, and James had been visibly trembling by the time they’d found the car.  
  
James had wanted to come. And hadn’t immediately collapsed into his arms in the hotel room, though Michael’d been prepared to catch him. Had let himself relax into shared strength, and—eventually—had looked up. With a smile.  
  
And Michael was happy. He got to come home to those blue eyes, after everything. James could help him remove the unfriendly suit. They’d _both_ be happy with that.  
  
A foot smacked into his shin. Hard.  
  
“Ow!”  
  
“Daydreaming? Was it about James? Was there a nude scene?”  
  
“None of your business,” Michael grumbled, and wondered whether it’d be gauche to kick his director under the table in retaliation, and whether he cared.  
  
“Pay attention,” Steve said cheerfully, “you’re up next.”  
  
“I’m not going to win. We _know_ I’m not going to win. I don’t even have a speech.”  
  
“Have some self-confidence,” Steve said, and settled back in his chair as the musical number finished and the announcer proclaimed the upcoming Best Actor category. Michael sighed, glared, and hastily transformed the glare into a smile when cameras swung their way.  
  
His parents and his sister would be watching from Ireland. Even James’s grandmother, whom he’d finally met the month before, would be watching, no doubt judging his fits of fidgeting. He’d tried winning her over with good scotch; she’d taken the scotch, and regarded the giver with skepticism.  
  
He had seen her smile, though. When James had fallen asleep leaning against him on the couch, and Michael’d looked down, meaning to say something, and then found himself watching each soft inhale and exhale, just gazing at trustingly closed eyes and knowing with every atom of his body how fortunate he was to be there…  
  
He’d looked over. She’d been watching them, too. She’d nodded slightly at him, and there’d been a crack in the protective stone.  
  
“Presenting the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role,” boomed the disembodied voice, and he jumped, “please welcome Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart!”  
  
Michael sat bolt upright. Managed to pick his jaw up from somewhere around his knees.  
  
Both Ian and Patrick looked resplendent. Perfectly styled up-to-the-minute tuxedos, shining shoes, and ear-to-ear grins. Michael, at the edge of his seat, darted his gaze from one to the other. Contemplated the possibility that he’d fallen asleep after all, and this was a particularly insane sort of dream.  
  
“So,” Ian said, gracefully collecting the microphone, “we’re overjoyed to be asked back, you know, after so many years away from the silver screen. We didn’t think anyone’d remember us…”  
  
“Darling, they’d always remember you,” Patrick said. “But we are extremely honored to be here presenting; we’ve had our day in the spotlight, you know, and we’ve been long retired…”  
  
The room was rapt. Full of attention. Michael was dimly aware that there must be stories he didn’t know, but he didn’t have any room for curiosity yet. Drowned in astonishment.  
  
“We _are_ honored,” Ian agreed, “especially because the person receiving the award, tonight, is such a dear friend of ours. But there’s someone else who wanted to be here, and for whom, well, this night is of even greater importance…”  
  
Ian couldn’t mean—No. No. James would never—James was back at the hotel, safe from strangers and cradled in blankets, couldn’t be here—  
  
“When we asked whether he’d like to help us, he said yes,” Patrick told the spellbound room. “You all know him, or you should. If you read, if you’ve ever read certain books called the First Class trilogy—”  
  
An enforced break for applause. The audience obviously had.  
  
“—then you’ll be pleased to hear his new novel—which is a fantasy romance, by the way, and I’ve read it, and it’s just lovely—will be out next month—”  
  
More cheers. “—and you’ll be even more pleased to see him here,” Ian finished. “James, if you would join us?”  
  
The applause redoubled. Deafening. Bouncing off the walls. Part of that was Patrick and Ian’s showmanship; part of it was the free-flowing champagne and a crowd ready to cheer at anything that’d liven up the ceremonial night.  
  
But most of it was for James.  
  
For James, who walked out onto the stage alone, wearing a tuxedo that fit every line of his body to perfection, every step determined.  
  
His hair was curling upwards. Mischievous, even now.  
  
Michael put a hand over his mouth. He knew his face was on the monitors, being broadcast across the globe. Knew he was crying. Didn’t care.  
  
James took the microphone—he was short enough to be mostly obscured behind the podium, and Michael laughed through the tears, through the elation, through the love—and said, luscious accent weaving melodies with every word, “Thank you, Ian, thank you, Patrick, and thanks for the book promotion, also,” which got a laugh. Michael’s heart swelled. Overflowing, thumping away in his chest.  
  
James. Up on the stage. _Here_.  
  
“You can likely all guess, since it’s me up here, but let’s hear the nominees, because they’re all brilliant,” James went on, and proceeded to read off names and film titles, gorgeous Scottish accent resonating through the room.  
  
Michael heard none of them. Just kept drinking in the sight of him. Flanked by Ian and Patrick, but standing on his own. Smiling. And blue eyes found his, impossibly, through the crowd, and stayed there.  
  
“And the Oscar goes to,” James said, and then flicked open the envelope, and smiled. And said his name.  
  
The next few minutes were a sapphire-hued blur. Nothing real except James. Steve pushed him to his feet, grinning like a pumpkin—in on it, Michael understood dazedly, through some Hollywood back-channel gossip, somehow, someway—and he made it through the handshakes and claps on the shoulder and congratulatory cheers and up to the stage, where he stumbled over the final step, gaze already at his destination.  
  
“James,” he whispered, and James held out the statue, all twinkling gold, and told him, “I love you,” plainly forgetting the presence of the microphone. The assorted celebrities cheered wildly.  
  
“I love you,” Michael said right back, “you’re incredible, James, you…I can’t even…I love you,” which incoherent statement earned joyous applause.  
  
Audience. Academy Awards. Right.  
  
“Um,” he managed, “I…don’t actually have a speech…I never expected…thank you, of course, thank you to the Academy for, you know, believing in me, and in the film, and the role—thank you to Steve, and everyone, the cast and crew—and my family, of course, my parents, my sister—Cat, I know you’re thinking of ways to mock this speech already—Patrick, Ian, everyone who—who took me in and gave me a home when I needed that. And James.” He turned to face those glorious eyes, at his side.  
  
“James, I can’t even—I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be anything, without you. And you being here, that’s already an award, that’s like—ten Oscars—”  
  
Most of the crowd seemed to know the story, from the way they sighed. Adoringly.  
  
Michael couldn’t blame them. James _was_ worth adoring.  
  
“Everything I could ever want,” he said, “everything, I love you, can I kiss you,” and James said _“Yes!”_ and plunged into his arms.  
  
He surfaced from euphoric bliss to annoyed-sounding musical cues and Patrick tapping him on the shoulder. “Schedule? As much as we’d not mind watching this show all night.”  
  
“I certainly wouldn’t mind,” Ian said. “Though you may wish to remember you’re being recorded for posterity. But by all means carry on.”  
  
“Oh, sorry…” James was smiling at him, lips all red and wet and thoroughly worshipped, eyes hazy with desire, hair even more impossible with the addition of Michael’s fingers being run through it. He forgot how to move all over again, at the vision before him.  
  
A French horn made a particularly impatient flourish, and he grabbed James’s hand and ran off the stage. They kissed again behind the curtains, laughing, giddy, breathless; clutched each other through the whirlwind of photos and poses and cameras backstage. James held on to him very tightly, but smiled for all the pictures, and even shouted back to an inquisitive microphone, grinning, “How do I feel? Best night of my life!” Michael transferred the statue-weight to the other hand, put an arm around his shoulders, and said, “One of the two best of mine,” and kissed him.  
  
James blushed deliciously pink. Michael truthfully had only meant the first enchanted evening after the I-love-yous, finally-spoken words hanging in the air and full of promise; but that blush likely meant that all the reporters and fans would take the reply a different way.  
  
Fair enough. Those were definitely good nights as well. Stellar, spectacular, incandescent nights, in fact.  
  
They tumbled in the direction of the official party, nudged along by escorts; the real parties’d happen later and elsewhere, but Michael promised, “we won’t stay long, we’ll go back to the room,” and James, whose grip around his waist was after all rather telling, nodded, and tipped his head up for another kiss.  
  
Another red carpet. Champagne. Cheers when they arrived. More cheers as Best Director and Best Picture were announced on the monitors—Michael saw Steve’s face, heard a mention of his own name in thanks, but lost the thread as he was submerged in congratulations. He found himself laughing, incredulous, dizzy with it all: the thrill of the night, the almond-sparkle on his tongue as he swallowed, the headiness of the gold in his hand, the warmth of James securely attached to his side.  
  
He smiled and shook hands and accepted the showers of praise. Noticed James talking to people, too; tried to listen.  
  
“James? Was that—”  
  
“Matthew Vaughn? He’s very nice.” James was laughing, champagne-flushed and happy, a little tipsy already and leaning into his side. Michael wrapped arms around him, proprietarily. A rather intoxicated Robert De Niro paused to wink at them; a woman Michael didn’t recognize, dripping in diamonds, told him how courageous it was that he’d made such a political statement of his award, flaunting his sexuality in public. Michael spluttered as she wobbled away, shook his head, and looked back at the man in his arms.  
  
He honestly hadn’t been thinking anything political or revolutionary, kissing James on that stage. There might be repercussions; he and James could handle them if so. There might not be; the applause’d certainly been genuine enough. Anyway, De Niro was wearing pink fishnets under his suit and showing them off to all interested parties; anything the two of them did would never hope to equal that level of outrageousness.  
  
Besides, he was in love. If anyone asked, it was just that simple.  
  
And James had just referred to Matthew Vaughn, a director Michael’d always liked, as _very nice_.  
  
“Do I want to know what he was asking you about?” James had been nodding, excited hands carving animated gestures through the air.  
  
“He’s interested in the First Class novels. In making them. As _movies_.” Ocean-expanse eyes blinked up at him. Michael revised his estimation of their tipsiness up a few notches. Wondered whether James had eaten anything before coming out on stage, or if he’d been too nervous.  
  
“He wants to option your trilogy? Also, did you have any food? And coffee doesn’t count as food. Not even with blueberry syrup in it.”  
  
“It doesn’t?” James blinked again. “It should. There were actual berries, you know that, you put them there. On top. And yes he does, and I might get to work on the script, and I’ve never been a scriptwriter before, I wonder what it’d be like, I like writing dialogue best, I always do that first anyway…”  
  
“James,” Michael said, “you can do anything, and I love you. Congratulations. We’re leaving now.”  
  
“We are?”  
  
“We are,” Michael informed him, “because otherwise I’m going to scandalize the Academy by having sex with you in public. In the middle of the party. Up against that wall.”  
  
James’s eyes went even wider.  
  
“Or possibly on that table. It looks sturdy enough.”  
  
“…I might even let you,” James said, recovering, grinning, “I could enjoy that, you pushing up my shirt, hand in my pants, making me beg for more…leaving the coats and ties on, by the way, all proper from the waist up, and all open and slick and ready for you from the waist _down_ …”  
  
“You. Bed. Now.”  
  
“Absolutely yes,” James said, and they ran through the party to the first available taxi, and devoured each other in the back seat, on the hotel steps, in the elevator, hands in hair and loosened ties and the tingle of champagne and exhilaration; James, backed up against the hotel-room door and distracted, nearly fell over when it opened, and Michael steadied him, held him close, felt his heart beating.  
  
He put both hands on James’s face, cupping the freckles, and said, very softly, “I love you.” The Oscar statuette sat on the armchair where he’d tossed it, content to eavesdrop and be ignored.  
  
“I know,” James said, a more private smile surfacing in those eyes, “I know. I love you.”  
  
“James?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“You surprised me, earlier…on the stage…”  
  
“That was the idea. Did you approve?”  
  
“Very, very much. Are you relatively sober?” He was walking James toward the bed, step by step. And towards his suitcase, on the floor.  
  
“I think so, yes.” James tipped his head to one side, intrigued, beautiful, pink-cheeked with alcohol and amusement and desire. “Are you trying to make certain you’re not taking advantage of me? Because I’d sleep with you regardless, you understand.”  
  
“Actually,” Michael said, and pushed gently on his shoulders, guiding him down to sit on the edge of the bed, “I had something I wanted to ask you. I’d been planning to ask you tonight no matter what, whether we won or lost or—you came here with me. You’ve been here through all of this, with me. And we can do this forever, I want to do this forever, with you, I—oh, fuck, hang on—”  
  
He lunged for his suitcase. Tossed concealing clothing aside. Found the object of his search. Couldn’t do this without it.  
  
James was sitting very still in place, tuxedo comprehensively disheveled, eyes enormous, lips parted on an indrawn breath. “Michael—are you—oh, my god.”  
  
“I didn’t write a speech for the Academy Awards,” Michael said, coming back, very carefully getting down on one knee in front of him, “but I do have a speech for this. Even if I interrupted it, sort of, just now. But…James McAvoy…you’re the best person I know. You told me once that you feel like smiling, around me; I always want to smile around you, and I love seeing you smile, always, too. You’re a genius author and an amazing chef—oh, and now probably an award-winning scriptwriter, just wait, we’ll be back here for you in a few years—and you have perfect hair.”  
  
This prompted a laugh, though blue eyes were shining too brightly, and James lifted a hand to flick a stray single water-drop away. Michael took that hand, and kissed it.  
  
“You make my life magical, every day. And I love you. Will you marry me?” And he held out the box. With the simple slim gold ring.  
  
“Oh yes,” James said, and stopped trying to hold back both the tears and the laughter, emotion unrestrained and billowing free, “yes!”  
  
“Yes,” Michael echoed, not quite believing; James shouted, “Yes!” and then, “come here, come here and kiss me, please, I love you, yes,” and Michael said “wait—” and slid the ring onto that finger, the hand he was still holding, where pale satiny sunshine-metal looped around the freckles in elation.  
  
“It’s perfect, it’s _perfect_ , how did you—”  
  
“I’m magical, too,” Michael said, which in fact meant that he’d taken advantage of James’s pre-coffee level of awareness one morning to wind a string around a compliant finger, but then James was pulling him up onto the bed and he couldn’t talk, because he was being kissed and undressed and a little bit rained on by tears, all at once.  
  
“I love you,” he added, shirtless and breathless, and James stopped removing his clothing for long enough to throw him a smile, radiant through drying tear-tracks.  
  
“I love you. I love this—” A wave of one hand; the ring caught the hotel lamplight and spun it into swirling gold, reflected from the matching gold on the armchair. “—and I love that we’re getting married. You said magical. A fairy-tale. It is.”  
  
“No,” Michael said, “we are, together,” and tipped him over into exuberant pillows, and jumped on top, and kissed him through the laughter.  
  
  


 

  
_no wonder, no wonder  
other half  
strange steps  
heels turn black  
the cinders, they splinter  
and light the path  
of these strange steps  
trace us back, trace us back_   
_flow sweetly, hang heavy_   
_you suddenly complete me_   
_you suddenly complete me…_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover art for "No Wonder, No Wonder (Other Half)"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053060) by [avictoriangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avictoriangirl/pseuds/avictoriangirl)




End file.
